Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire, 1730-1914 9781611431278, 1611431271

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire, 1730-1914

Analecta Isisiana: Ottoman and Turkish Studies

6

A co-publication with The Isis Press, Istanbul, the series consists of collections of thematic essays focused on specific themes of Ottoman and Turkish studies. These scholarly volumes address important issues throughout Turkish history, offering in a single volume the accumulated insights of a single author over a career of research on the subject.

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire, 1730-1914

Donald Quataert

The Isis Press, Istanbul

preSS 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by The Isis Press, Istanbul Originally published in 1993 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of The Isis Press, Istanbul. 2010

ISBN 978-1-61143-127-8

Reprinted from the 1993 Istanbul edition.

Printed in the United States of America

Donald Quataert is Professor of History at Binghamton University. He received an A.B. in History from Boston University and his Masters of Arts degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in History in 1973 from the University of California, Los Angeles. His dissertation was entitled "Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia, 1876-1908." He is the author of several books including : Social Disintegration

and

Popular

Resistance in the Ottoman Empire 1881-1908 (New York 1983); Manufacturing and Technology Transfer in the Ottoman Empire 1800-1914 (Istanbul 1992); Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution 1993). He also has edited and co-edited a number of books.

(Cambridge

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

IX

"The Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic as a Source for Late Ottoman and Middle East History," International Journal of Middle East Studies, 9 1978

1

"Agricultural Trends and Government Policy in Ottoman Anatolia, 1800-1914," Asian and African Studies, March 1981

17

"Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire, 1830-1914," in Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury, eds., Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East, Miami, 1991

31

"The Young Turk Revolution : Old and New Approaches," Middle East Studies Association, July 1979

41

Bulletin,

"The Economic Climate of the 'Young Turk Revolution' of 1908," Journal of Modern History, September, 1979, On Demand Publication

49

"Limited Revolution : The Impact of the Anatolian Railway on Turkish Transportation and the Provisioning of Istanbul, 18901908," The Business History Review, Summer, 1977..

63

"Ottoman Women, Households, and Textile Manufacturing, 18001914," in Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron, eds., Shifting Boundaries : Women and Gender in Middle Eastern History, New Haven, 1991

§1

VIH

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

"The Silk Industry of Bursa, 1880-1914," Collection Turcica, I. Contributions à l'histoire économique et sociale de l'empire ottoman Paris, 1984

97

"Machine Breaking and the Changing Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia, 1860-1908," Journal of Social History, Spring 1986.

117

"The Employment Policies of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, 1881-1909," Festschrift ftir Andreas Tietze, 76. Band, Wiener Zeitschrift ftir die Kunde des Morgendlandes, 1986

137

"Ottoman Workers and the State, 1826-1914," in Zachary Lockman, ed., Middle Eastern Labor and Working Class History, Albany, 1993

141

"Premières fumées d'usines," in Gilles Veinstein, éd., Salonique, ¡850-1918, Paris, 1992. This is the original English rendition of the article that appeared in French translation

159

"Main Problems of the Economy during the Tanzimat Period," Paper presented to the Vlth International Congress on the Social and Economic History' of Turkey, Istanbul, 1989

175

"Labor and Working Class History during the Late Ottoman Period, c. 1800-1914," Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, September 1991

185

"Janissaries, Artisans and the Question of Ottoman Decline, 17301826," Paper presented to the 17th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Madrid, 1990

197

INTRODUCTION

I am delighted to offer this volume of my articles and papers — all of which were published or presented previously — as the fifth contribution to a series sponsored by the Isis Press. The intent of the series is to make available scholarly contributions that have appeared in widely scattered and often-quiteinaccessible formats. These five volumes summarize the international development of Ottoman historical studies and trace the intellectual evolution of the first numerically-large group of Ottoman specialists, one that emerged in the post-1970 period. Collectively, the volumes published to date reflect the preponderance of economic history in the field of Ottoman studies. Ottoman historical writing has shown a very considerable expansion and maturation since 1970, when I began my Ph.D. dissertation research on nineteenth century Ottoman agriculture. At that time, even the most general outlines of Ottoman economic and social history were unknown. Since then, the researches of my cohort and our successors have filled in, however crudely, many of the unknown spaces. There are still vast stretches of terra incognita but, like 1990s explorers of the Antarctic continent, we have a pretty good idea of where we are and where we are going. The articles and papers published in the following pages reflect, in many respects, the interests of my generation and the strengths and weaknesses of the field of Ottoman studies. Broadly speaking, my research often (and in recent years, increasingly) has sought to offer a history from below, an approach that is present in Ottoman studies but is more visible in other fields of historical specialization, for example, French, German, East Asian and American history. History from below was born of die confluence of two forces. The first was the democratization of the university that brought the children of diversified backgrounds and gender into the realms of higher learning in far greater numbers than ever before. The second force, one relating more directly to developments in the United States, was the concern for social justice during the 1960s that gave rise to die civil rights movement and, in part, the anti-Vietnam War protests. Many apprentice historians turned to the study of the oppressed and the weak and sought to tell the story of tlieir lives.

X

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

In Ottoman studies, however, history from below still remains unusual. The focus on economic history, for its part, has produced fine studies about commerce, agriculture and, to a lesser extent, manufacturing and mining. But there has been little concern for the individuals and groups working in those sectors. Merchants have received some attention but peasants, artisans, miners and others have not. Ottoman history is inhabited by few representatives of the popular classes while the Ottoman state itself continues to be the central object of study. The narratives of Ottoman history, moreover, largely are devoid of conflict in social relations. A number of factors help account for this state of affairs. The first two are more general issues, ones that Ottoman history from below shares with other fields; the others seem more particular to Ottoman historical studies, Let me begin with the well-known fact that history from below concerns persons and groups who leave few written records about themselves and their lives. Common sources for much of that history — state and company archives and the observations of die literate classes in general — often are hostile or indifferent to peasants, workers and miners. These class barriers, by definition, make the task of writing history from below more difficult than, for example, that of a literate bureaucrat and intellectual such as Mustafa Ali. The achievements of, for example, Alltagsgeschichte in German history, however, demonstrate that the obstacles to good history from below can be breached with considerable success.1 The second related and general factor concerns the cultural differences between the European authors who prepared reports about the Ottoman Empire and the objects of their concern. Diplomatic correspondents of the various European governements as well as Levant Company agents viewed the Ottoman Empire chiefly through the prism of their own particular interests, as a backdrop against which those interests were played out. They held Ottoman subjects at one remove, at a distance and had their own, different, concerns and culture. Thus, Ottoman historians examining those from below and using materials generated by a different class and culture find the reseiirch task doubly difficult. Another factor is the documentation available in the Ottoman archives, that is, the Prime Ministry Archives. It was, in truth, the presence of these archival materials that attracted me and many others to the field. The study of these numerous documents remains very exciting. But they are the creation of government officials and uncritical use of the documents helps to perpetuate a statist perspective on the Ottoman past. This is because Ottoman bureaucratic and military officials wrote about what concerned them and their state. They were

' F o r a summary, see Geoff Eley, "Labor Hislory, Social History. Alltagsgeschichte: Experience, Culture and the Politics of the Everyday — a N e w Direction of German Social History?" Journal of Modem History (June 1989), 297-343.

Introduction

XL

not seeking to capture the totality of their world, a task that we historians collectively are seeking to achieve. The state document writers usually discussed peasants as objects, producers of wealth, and rarely as agents with everyday lives beyond those as taxpayers. Only recently have some Ottoman historians recognized that the inherent nature of state-generated sources presents only one view of the past, that of a government elite. However valuable, this viewpoint nonetheless is an elite one from above, a perspective that the historian studying those from below must take into account. Also, the sheer quantity of Ottoman archive documents often entrapped scholars, causing them to ignore relevant evidence located elsewhere. And lastly, for certain periods of Ottoman history, there are few alternative collections of documents that have been cataloged and are accessible. The problem of the sources has been compounded by the manner in which we have carried out our craft. In the past few decades, inquirers into the Ottoman past generally have belonged to two groups. (1) Scholars with strong theoretical backgrounds (usually sociologists and political scientists) who study Ottoman history but without the benefit of archival research. (2) Those, usually selfidentified as historians, who aimed at archival research from the outset of their careers. Some of the first group remain unwilling to enter the archives, mistakenly believing that therein is little of significance for understanding the Ottoman past. For them, theory applied to secondary sources is sufficient and the development of thé skills needed for archival research unnecessary. Others were denied the necessary government permission, for political reasons, to enter the archives. Turning to the second group, we find that, alas, most of them were better trained as paleographers and/or philologists than as historians. In part, this is because language training in the United States is extremely poor and American Ottomanists typically acquire their language skills late in their careers, in graduate school, at the expense of historical training. But many Ottomanists of other nationalities living between London and Ankara similarly translate more often than analyze. Too many Ottoman historians approach the archives as neoRankeians, asking few questions of the documents except the literal meaning of the words written down on the paper! They continue to hold that the words themselves contain the truth and seem to believe that if we translate all the words of all the documents in the archives, then we will have uncovered the evolving totality of Ottoman society. In their zeal to exhaust the supply of unexamined documents, Ottoman historians often merely regurgitate rather than analyze the documents. Many researchers are archivists not historians. My shelves are full of dissertations, books and other publications that are scarcely more than translations (however ably done) of Ottoman documents. These may be informative but they are not good history. Still worse, this is a self-perpetuating cycle in which skilled readers of documents who are poor historians train the next generation of scholars, who unsurprisingly, in their turn, emerge as poor historians, albeit with superlative paleographic skills. The emphasis remains on

XII

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

documents as collections of interesting words or as samples of difficult scripts or exciting types of governmental decrees. The archivist character of Ottoman historians has much to do with the marginality of Ottoman studies in the United States and elsewhere. The field of Ottoman studies remains isolated. Most of our colleagues in other fields of specialization wrongly consider Ottoman history to be an exotic field unlinked to European, American or other histories. Given the key importance of Ottoman history to early modern and modern European and global history, this is an extraordinary state of affairs! Practices such as the interminable use of untranslated Ottoman words and phrases keep at bay the intrepid historian from another field who seeks insights into Ottoman history. Archivism is a serious problem for Ottoman historical writing in general. But it is deadly for the uncovering of history from below, since that enterprise requires scholars to tease from documents a story that their scribal authors did not intend to write, a history of living peasants and artisans and not merely of rural and urban taxpayers. In sum, documentary abundance combined with the scholars' lack of historical method and imagination creates a deadly paralysis. We have followed the path of least resistance, reproducing the official mind, the state's view of history. There are no easy escapes from this situation. Greater familiarity with work written outside of Ottoman history could provide insights from more advanced fields of study 2 We need to clearly address the issue of why Ottoman history is important and how it fits into more general patterns of European and global history. Another factor that inhibits the maturation of Ottoman history in general and impedes the writing of Ottoman history from below is the inability of the various successor states to deal with their Ottoman past. I am most familiar with the example of the modem Turkish state, the nature and evolution of which powerfully has shaped Ottoman historiography. In the process of its formation during the early decades of the twentieth century, the emerging Turkish republic essentially excluded popular participation. It restricted political activity to a small elite, crushed labor movements and made tliem illegal and kept peasants out of the political process. Government and elite suspicion of the popular classes was exacerbated because of the new Turkey's proximity to the Soviet Union, self-proclaimed standard bearer for the workers and peasants of the world. Worker and peasant demands and activities inside Turkey too easily were labeled as communism and thus dismissed out of hand as traitorous and dangerous to the state. An effective censorship and self-censorship came to prevail in Ottoman

•'For a recent effort, see Zafer Toprak, "Sosyal Tarihin Alani ve Tiirkiye Ge^egi," Toplum Bilim 54/55 (Yaz/Güz 1991). 77-88.

\e

Introduction

xra

historical studies, and not only among Turkish nationals. Ottoman society and economy appeared in an odd light, discussed (nearly) solely in reference to the state, which each docilely served. Ottoman peasants were seen through the prism of Turkish peasants who, in the republican Turkish elite world view, were (passive) repositories of,core national values. Ottoman peasants were important because they were the base on which the state rested, but not as a class or group with independent interests and concerns. Ottoman workers similarly became an example of elaborate governmental control systems and little more, just as workers in Turkey were carefully monitored and overseen. An Ottomanist equivalent to Eric Hobsbawm's Lives of Labor, in my view, literally was unthinkable until very recently. Is the study of workers still a vaguely illegitimate academic enterprise among Ottomanists? Peasants and artisans out of control, i.e., seeking to promote their own interests, were seen as lawless persons, like the Janissaries, operating beyond die bounds of law and order and worthy of extermination. In the other successor states we find that Syrian, Romanian, Greek, Iraqi, Bulgarian and Egyptian historians generally have been too willing to denounce the Ottoman legacy as degenerate, destructive and, oddly enough, also irrelevant. That is, the writing of Ottoman history in these countries, as in Turkey, repeatedly has been bent to serve the agenda of the state. While this tendency obviously is not unique to Ottoman history writing, our situation does seem somewhat worse because, until very recently, there has been little acknowledgement that such is the case.3 Many of the publications in this volume demonstrate the difficulties in constructing a view from below in Ottoman history that truly is from the perspective of peasants, craft and service sector workers and miners. For example, the "Agricultural Trends" article, appearing in 1981, was an outgrowth of my dissertation that, for its part, I originally intended as a study of the Anatolian peasants themselves. As I confronted, in 1970, hundreds of archival documents about state policies towards peasants and few about the peasants themselves, the dissertation inexorably shifted its focus away from a history of the peasants to a history of agricultural policy. Thus, in "Agricultural Trends," there are macroeconomic patterns and government policies but no peasants. Ten years later, the "Rural Unrest" article appeared, seeking to focus tightly on peasant actions. But, the peasants remain shadowy and elusive figures; basically they are objects rather than actors.. In this article, there is no texture, no rich detail, of the

3

An interesting effort to place history writing in Turkey in its historical context is Halil Berktay, "The Search for the Peasant in Western and Turkish History/Historiography," in Halil Berktay and Suraiya Faroqhi, eds.. New Approaches to Slate and Peasant in Ottoman History, Special Issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies, (April-July 1991), 110-184, esp. 137ff.

XIV

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

peasants' lives. Emmanuel Ladurie need not fear this writer as a rival nor, for that matter, any among the current generations of those writing on Ottoman peasants. Is an achievement such as that of Ladurie a matter of individual genius; does the absence of a counterpart among Ottoman historians indicate that something fundamental is missing in Ottoman history? Is it our methodology or lack thereof, our sources, and/or the absence of large numbers of researchers? In part, yes! It certainly is true that Middle East and Ottoman studies have presented very few methodological innovations to any discipline. The one exception that comes to mind is Edward Said's Orientalism, that did change the way that many scholars outside of the Middle East field think about their respective areas of study. There are problems with our sources, at least those presently available. But Sherry Vatter's innovative article on the journeymen of 19th century Damascus is a hopeful sign that good history from below can be done. 4 The very paucity of researchers does inhibit us as well. It is on the shoulders of the cadres of American and French scholars scouring local archives, after all, that the great historians of those fields make their contributions. And here, the relative underdevelopment of archive management and preservation play a negative role as well. How many fabulous records lie rotting in the scores of local and regional repositories scattered across the Ottoman world? Several of the articles herein — "Machine Breaking" and "Ottoman Workers and the State'1 — may be useful for their suggestions on ways to combine sources in order to offer a history of the popular classes from the bottom up. They begin to present workers for their own sake with their own agendas and concerns Both articles are rooted in rich Ottoman archival documents — the first a set of telegrams, dated 1908, about riots and the second a series of 19th century-artisanal petitions to state officials. But the success of these articles also derives from the combination of archival materials with a wide variety of information culled from other sources. These range from travel books to a published work by a union leader to European primary sources. A great advantage to their use is the partial escape that they offer from the perspective of the Ottoman state. These kinds of materials are common in the later Ottoman period but too often have been ignored, a sacrifice on (lie altar of the archives. Let me attempt to bring together some of the arguments that I presented above. To begin: Ottoman documents, by themselves, often do not provide a sufficient basis for understanding Ottoman history and should be used in conjunction with a variety of other sources whenever possible. A fuller mix of sources will help to remove the Ottoman state from the center of the historian's

^ S h e r r y Valter, "Journeymen Textile Weavers in Nineteenth Century D a m a s c u s : A Collective Biography," in E d m u n d Burke, III, ed., Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (Berkeley and Los Angeles. 199.?), 75-90.

Introduction

XV

analysis and facilitate a clearer focus on the non-elite groups, such as the peasants and workers. Having said that, I am hopeful about the new kinds of Ottoman primary sources becoming available, both in the Ottoman archives and elsewhere. But we need to have a critical sense when using these materials, including the court records and pious foundation collections that hold so much promise for Ottoman history from below. The court records, for example, are state documents of a path of legal recourse that was more available to the urban as well as to the better off in Ottoman society. They thus exclude many of the persons of interest to us. Also, we need to redefine our goals to include objectives beyond deciphering yet another previously-unread document. The problem often is not so much a lack of information — although this still can be a serious problem — as a lack of analysis of the material already unearthed. We need to better utilize die vast numbers of documents uncovered by others that are available to us, and ask better questions. Often we eagerly leap directly into the archival materials and do not build sufficiendy on already-completed studies. Furthermore, we are refusing to engage in scholarly debate with one another. Generally, we act as if there are no differences of interpretation among us (there are exceptions such as the debate around the Ottomans' origins or, less recently, die nature of the Celali rebellions). Take, for example, my two 1979 articles on die Young Turk Revolution of 1908. Whatever their merit, they did seek to offer a different way of diinking about this important event. Was it a coup afterall or, as I suggested, might it have been an effort to prevent social revolution? To my knowledge, not one line of print has ever appeared attacking my argument, although there are many who disagreed. Rifa'at 'Ali Abou-El-Haj's book, Formation of the Modern State recently has appeared and should generate considerable discussion. Some of his propositions are controversial or speculative. They are seriously put forward, by a historian committed to his field, and are entitled to scholarly debate on the issues presented. There is nothing wrong with argumentation nor anything disrespectful about disagreement. The journals of most fields are full of scholarly arguments on important questions. In sum, we rework tired themes and ask few questions. Our work frequently is heavily encoded in secret languages and is unintelligible to nonspecialists who thus are encouraged to shun Ottoman history as irrelevant. We cling to official sources and remain unwilling to venture very far from these data, to exercise imagination. We either breathe the thin ether of theory unsupported by research or are choking on undiluted empiricism. Too much of the historical writing about the Ottoman past is deadly dull. This is a great disservice to a vibrant, exciting and important story.

THE ZENTRALES STAATSARCHIV OF THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC AS A SOURCE FOR LATE OTTOMAN AND MIDDLE EAST HISTORY

The archives of the imperial German government, 1871-1918, are an important but somewhat neglected source for late Ottoman and Middle East history. These collections fell into Soviet, American, French, and British hands after World War II and are presently divided between the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the German Federal Republic (West Germany). The documents in the German Federal Republic have been examined by a number of Western scholars and require little comment here. These materials are on deposit in the Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes in Bonn and in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. With the exception of published materials originally enclosed with the correspondence, many of the Bonn documents are available on microfilm from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Generally, the Bonn and Koblenz holdings represent the major portion of the political section of the Imperial German Foreign Office archives and primarily concern questions of international diplomacy and finance, for example, negotiations for railroad concessions or loans. Although valuable in this regard, they contain relatively little information on conditions within the Middle East. The Zentrales Staatsarchiv in Potsdam, founded in June 1946, with a second section in Merseburg, is the largest depository of archival materials in the German Democratic Republic.1 This archive contains the balance of the Imperial German Foreign Office documents and the vast majority of its economic and

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I gratefully acknowledge that the research here reported was made possible by a grant awarded by the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, 1975. *See H. Lötzke et al„ Deutsches Zentralarchiv, 1946-1971 (Potsdam, 1971), for a more thorough discussion of the history of the archives and its holdings.

2

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

commercial reports. In the summer of 1975,1 performed research in Potsdam and Merseburg and discovered an extraordinarily rich collection of documents offering historians detailed insights into the structure and mechanics of Ottoman society and economics.2 The several German states and, from its inception in 1871, the imperial German government, maintained consular offices in Istanbul and ultimately in three dozen cities in Rumeli, Anatolia, and the Arab provinces. Imperial Germany's late nineteenth-century drive to Weltmacht is well known; the Zentrales Staatsarchiv materials abundantly demonstrate the economic aspects of this drive with lengthy consular reports on Ottoman commerce, agriculture, industry, and mining. These regularly submitted reports are supplemented with specially prepared studies of specific Ottoman regions, for example, the Black Sea coast and the district of Karasi. Used in conjunction with the Ba§bakanlik Ar§ivi (Prime Minister's Archives) in Istanbul, the Zentrales Staatsarchiv can offer a balanced view of many hitherto unexplored areas of social, economic, and cultural history, in the late Ottoman period. Those who wish to use the archives should send requests for research permission at least six months before research is to began to Herrn Direktor Ministerialrat der DDR

Ministerium der Innern Staatlichen Archivverwultung 15 Potsdam Berlinerstrasse 98-101 Deutsche Demokratische Republik

Roderic H. Davison ("European Archives as a Source for Later Ottoman History," Report on Current Research on the Middle East, I95X [Washington, 1958], pp. 33-45) discusses the value and pitfalls of using European materials in researching Ottoman history

The Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic

3

HOLDINGS AT POTSDAM The list of consular reports presented below represents a fair sampling of the Potsdam holdings relating to Middle East or Ottoman history. The documents are noted according to original German title, catalog number of the volumes, number of volumes, and their inclusive dates. A volume (Band) can comprise three pages or 500 pages of documents bound together. The materials span the period 1865-1918 and are presented below in four major groups: 1. Reports from or about five regions: (a) Istanbul, (b) Anatolia, (c) Rumeli, (d) the Arab provinces, and (e) Egypt. When possible, reports are listed alphabetically by city or by place of origin. 2. Document groups concerning the railroads. Consular reports from Istanbul and other cities listed in the first category also contain materials concerning the lines in all areas of the empire. Information concerning negotiations and the international machinations over railroad concessions is included but the focus is on the actual socioeconomic impact of railroads in operation. 3. Sets of documents, more than 100 volumes, concerning Ottoman commerce with Germany and seventeen other nations. Also included are materials on commercial treaty negotiations between Germany and the Ottoman Empire and those concerning general Ottoman commercial regulations and practices. 4. Reports concerning a variety of subjects including agriculture, specific Ottoman commercial regulations, shipments of munitions, and banking.

All entries belong to the Auswärtiges Amt (AA) classification. The abbreviations Pol. Abt. and Abt. II that follow the title of each entry designate, respectively, that die Foreign Ministry originally handled the report in question either in its Politische Abteilung (Political Section) or Handelspolitische Abteilung (Commercial Section). Documents from the two classifications are catalogued separately in the archive. Researchers with limited time should note that reports filed under the Commercial Section heading tend to contain more abundant materials on social and economic affairs and should be considered first when materials from both classifications are available from the same year.

4

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

1. REGIONAL REPORTS a. Originating in Istanbul These reports usually include discussion of other Ottoman regions and were the vehicle through which special reports were forwarded to the Berlin government.

Catalog number 5237652391

5373453740 8717 87288730

6706

Title

Number of volumes

Date

Das Generalkonsulat in Konstantinopel (The Istanbul General Consulate) Pol. Abt.

Jan. 186817 Dez. 1899 (Bd. I not available) Jahresberichte des Konsulats Konstantinopel Aug. 18877 (Annual Report of the Istanbul Consulate) Juni 1907 Pol. Abt. Handelsattache in Konstantinopel 1 Juni 1899Okt. 1902. (Commercial Attaché in Istanbul) Abt. II Berichte des Handelsattache beim Generalkonsul 3 Mar. 1900in Konstantinopel (Reports of the Commercial) Feb. 1905 Attaché of the Istanbul Consul-General) Abt. II Jahreshandelsberichte des Generalkonsulat in 1 Juli 1907Konstantinopel (Annual Reports of the Istanbul Juli 1918 General Consulate) Abt. II.

b. Originating in or concerning Anatolia Arranged alphabetically by city of consulate according to modern Turkish orthography as translated 6691

52364 53731 6718

Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Adana 1 (Annual Commercial Reports of the Adana Consulate) Abt. II. Das Konsulat in Brussa 1 (Bursa Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Brussa 1 (Annual Reports of the Bursa Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Vize-Konsulats 1 Tschanak (Annual Commercial Reports of

Juli 1912Jan. 1913 Mai 1869Aug. 1889 Sept. 1900Dez. 1902 Sept. 1907Aug. 1911

The Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic

Catalog number

52422 5375253753 6694

5240352411 5374253745 6715

53778 6705

52431

53764 6707

53779 6714

5241252413 5374653747

Title

Number of volumes

£anakkale Vice-Consulate) Abt. II. Das Vize-Konsulat in Alexandretta 1 (tskenderun Vice-Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Vize-Konsulats Alexandretta 1 (Annual Reports of Iskenderun Vice-Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Vize-Konsulats in 1 Aiexandretta (Annual Commercial Reports of the Iskenderun Vice-Consulate) Abt. II. Das Konsulat in Smyrna (Izmir Consulate) 10 Pol. Abt. (Bd. I not available) Jahresberichte des Konsulats Smyrna (Annual 4 Reports of die Izmir Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Smyrna 1 (Annual Commercial Reports of Izmir Consulate) Abt. II. Jahresbericht des Konsulats Konia (Annual 1 Report of Konya Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Konia 1 ( Annual Commercial Reports of Konya Consulate) Abt. II. Die Errichtung eines Konsularamts in Mersina 1 (Foundation of a Consular office in Mersin) Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Mersina (Annual I Reports of the Mersin Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsbericlit des Konsulats Mersina 1 (Annual Commercial Report of the Mersin Consulate) Abt. II. Jahresbericht des Konsulats Samsun (Annual 1 Report of Samsun Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Samsun 1 (Annual Commercial Reports of Samsun Consulate) Abt. II. Das Konsulat in Trapezunt (Trabzon Consulate) 2 Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Trapezunt (Annual 2 Reports of Trabzon Consulate) Pol. Abt.

5

Date

Nov. 1871Mai 1888 Apr. 1887Dez. 1906 Sept. 1907Dez. 1913 Dez. 1867Mai 1900 Nov. 1887Dez. 1906 Jan 1908Feb. 1914 Mai 1906 Juli 1907Okt. 1909 Juni 1886Juli 1898 Aug. 1893Dez. 1906 Sept. 1907Nov. 1909 Feb.-Dez. 1906 Juni 1907Juli 1909 Dez. 1867Sept. 1885 Juni 1887Nov. 1904

6

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Catalog number 6719

Title

Number of volumes

Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Trapezunt (Annual Commercial Reports of Trabzon Consulate) Abt. II.

1

Date Juli 1910Jan. 1915

c. Originating in or concerning Rumeli (European Turkey) Included are reports from the Aegean islands, such as Crete and Chios. Arranged alphabetically by city of consulate according to standard modern usage. For Dedeaga^, see Alexandroupolis; for Rodosto, see Tekirdag. 53777

6700

1170

53778 11814

53774 5376253763 6698

53754

52347 6709

Jahresberichte des Konsulats Dedeagatch (Annual Reports of Alexandroupolis [Dedeagaf] Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Dedeagatch (Annual Commercial Reports of Alexandroupolis [Dedeaga?] Consulate) Abt. II. Die Handels-und Schiffahrtsverfiältnisse mit Bosnien (Commercial and Shipping Relations with Bosnia) Abt. II. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Castro (Annual Reports of ("astro [Chios] Consulate) Pol. Abt. Handels- und Schiffahrtsverhältnisse mit Kreta (Commercial and Shipping Relations with Crete) Abt. II. Jalireshandelsbererichte des Konsulats Kandia (Annual Reports of Candia Consulate) Abt. II. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Chios (Annual Reports of Chios Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Chios (Annual Commercial Reports of Chios Consulate) Abt. II. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Dardanellen (Annual Reports of Dardanelles Consulate) Pol. Abt. Das Konsulats Andrianopel (Edirne Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Mytilene (Annual Commercial Reports of Mytilene Consulate) Abt. II.

The Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic

Catalog number 5241452419 5374853749 6712

52423 53756 6713

67276728 53773 6711

11729

Title

Number of volumes

Das Konsulat in Saloniki (Salonika Consulate) 6 Pol. Abt. 2 Jahresberichte des Konsulats Saloniki (Annual Reports of Salonika Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Saloniki 1 (Annual Commercial Reports of Salonika Consulate) Abt. II. Das Vize-Konsulat auf Samos (Vice-Consulate 1 at Samos) Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Vize-Konsulats Samos (Annual 1 Reports of Samos Vice-Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Vize-Konsulats Samos 1 (Annual Commercial Reports of Samos ViceConsulate) Abt. II. 2 Handelsverhältnisse mit Samos (Commercial Relations with Samos) Abt. II. 1 Jahresberichte des Konsulats Rodosto (Annual Reports of Tekirdag Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Vize-Konsulats Rodosto 1 (Annual Commercial Reports of Tekirdag Vice-Consulate) Abt. II. Hafenbau von Varna (Harborworks of Varna) 1 Abt. II.

7

Date Okt. 1871Juni 1896 Jan. 1887Dez. 1906 Jan. 1907Mar. 1914 Dez. 1874Aug. 1894 Aug. 1887Dez. 1906 Jan. 1907Juni 1912 Juni 1905Aug. 1915 Juni 1895Dez. 1906 Juli 1907Dez. 1915 Jan.-Nov. 1872

d. Originating in/or concerning the Arab provinces (excluding Egypt) General entries followed by alphabetical listing of city of consulate according to standard modem usage. For Haifa, see also Acre.and Haifa. 6654

53726

52420 53750 52342

Die Schiffahrt auf dem Euphrat und Tigris (Navigation on the Euphrates and Tigris) Abt. II. Bericht des Konsuls Briinüng über Syrien (Report of Consul Briinüng concerning Syria) Pol. Abt. Das Konsulat in Akke und Haife (Consulate in Acre and Haifa) Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Akka (Annual Reports of Acre Consulate) Pol. Abt. Das Konsulat in Aleppo (Aleppo Consulate)

1

Sept. 1883Dez. 1908

1

1878

1

Nov. 1871Aug. 1888 Feb. 1887Dez. 1906 Mai 1869-

1 1

8

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Catalog number

53724 6692

5243252433 5376553766 6695

52357-

Title

Number of volumes

Pol. Abt. Jahresbericht des Konsulats Aleppo (Annual Report o f Aleppo Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Aleppo (Annual Commercial Reports of Aleppo Consulate) Abt. II. Das Errichtung eines Konsularamts in Baghdad (Building of a Consular Office in Baghdad) Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Konsulat Baghdad (Annual

Juni 1877 1

Okt. 1887Dez. 1906

1

Juli 1908Jan. 1914

2

Nov. 1887Sept. 1899

2

Reports o f Baghdad Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Baghdad (Annual Commercial Reports of Bagdad Consulate) Abt. II. Das Konsulat in Beirut (Beirut Consulate)

1

7

53757 6699

Reports of Damascus Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats in Damaskus 1

52424

Juli 1896Dez. 1906 Juni 1907Dez. 1913

Pol. Abt. 4 Jahresberichte des Konsulats Beirut (Annual Reports of Beirut Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats in Beirut 1 (Annual Commercial Reports of Beirut Consulate) Abt. II. Das Konsulat in Damaskus (Damascus Consulate) 1 Pol Abt. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Damaskus (Annual 1

52363 5372753730 6696

Date

(Annual Commercial Reports of Damascus

Dez. 1867Juli 1898 Mar. 1887Nov. 1906 Jan. 1907Jan. 1916 Feb. Mai Mai Dez.

18701887 18901906

Sept. 1909Feb. 1913

Consulate) Abt. II. 6701

Jahreshandelsbericlue des Konsulats in Haife

1

(Annual Commercial Reports of Haifa

Sept. 1907Sept. 1913

Consulate) Abt. II. 5243852439 53775

Das Vize-Konsulat in Jaffa (Jaffa ViceConsulate) Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Vize-Konsulats Jaffa (Annual

6702

Jahreshandelsberichte des Vize-Konsulats Jaffa (Annual Commercial Reports of Jaffa Vice-

2 1

Reports of Jaffa Vice-Consulate) Pol. Abt.

5239352401

1

Apr. 1870Sept. 1897 Sept. 1895Dez. 1906 Jan. 1907Mai 1914

Consulate) Abt. II. Das Konsulat in Jerusalem (Jerusalem Consulate) 10

Okt. 1867-

Pol. Abt.

Juni 1898

The Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic

Catalog number 53741 6703

52421 53780 6708

53751 53755

6717

Title

Number of volumes

9

Date

Jahresberichte des Konsulats Jerusalem (Annual Reports of Jerusalem Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats in Jerusalem (Annual Commercial Reports of Jerusalem (Consulate) Abt. II. Das Vize-Konsulat in Lattakieh (Latakia ViceConsulate) Pol. Abt. Jahresbericht des Konsulats Mossul (Annual Report of Mosul Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats in Mossul (Annual Commercial Reports of Mosul Consulate) Abt. II. Jahresberichte des Konsulats Saida (Annual Reports of Sidon Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahresberichte des Vize-Konsulats Tripolis (Annual Reports of Tripoli Vice-Consulate) Pol. Abt. Jahreshandelsberichte des Vize-Konsulats in Tripolis (Annual Commercial Reports of Tripoli Vice-Consulate) Abt. II.

e. Originating in or concerning Egypt General entries followed by alphabetical listing of city of consulate according to standard modern usage. 1168611721 1173011762

1176311765 11792

52344-

Die Kanalbauten durch die Landenge bei Suez 34 (Canal-Building through the Isthmus of Suez) Abt. II. Die Handels-und Schiffalmsverhältnisse mit 33 Aegypten und die aegyptische Steuerreform (Commercial and Shipping Relations with Egypt and toe Egyptian Tax Reform) Abt. II. Handelsverhältnisse mit dem Sudan 3 (Commercial Relations with the Sudan) Abt. II. Beschwerden diesseitiger Untertanen gegen 1 aegyptische Zollbehörden (Complaints of our [German] Subjects against Egyptian Customs Authorities) Abt. II. Das General Konsulat in Alexandrien (Alexandria 14

Jan. 1869Mar. 1906 Juni 1870Dez. 1906

Sept. 1897Mar. 1905 Apr. 1887

Nov. 1867-

10

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Catalog number 52356 5242552430 52430/1

5375853761 6693

5236552374 5373253733 6704

52434 52435 5376753770 6710

5243652437 5377153772 6716

Title

Number of volumes

Date

(Bd. I not Juli 1898 available) Apr. 1887Das Konsulat in Alexandrien (Alexandria 6 Consulate) Pol. Abt. Juli 1899 1 Errichtung eines Gebäudes für das General Aug. 1865Konsulat in Alexandrien (Erection of a Building Nov. 1872 for the Alexandria General Consulate) Pol. Abt. 4 Apr. 1888Jahresberichte des Konsulats in Alexandrien (Annual Reports of the Alexandria Consulate) Dez. 1906 Pol. Abt. 1 Sept. 1907Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats in Dez. 1913 Alexandrien (Annual Commercial Reports of the Alexandria Consulate) Abt. II. Das Konsulat in Kairo (Cairo Consulate) 10 Mar. 1868Pol. Abt. Juli 1899 Jahresberichte des Konsulats Kairo (Annual 2 Dez. 1900Reports of the Cairo Consulate) Pol. Abt. Dez. 1906 1 Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats Kairo Aug. 1907Nov. 1913 (Annual Commercial Reports of Cairo Consulate) Abt. II. Mar. 1868Das Konsulat in Damiette (Damietta Consulate) 1 Mai 1895 Pol. Abt. Mar. 1868Das Konsulat in Port Said (Port Said Consulate) 1 Feb. 1889 Pol. Abt. Mai 1887Jahresberichte des Konsulats Port Said (Annual 4 Dez. 1906 Reports of Port Said Consulate) Pol. Abt. Aug. 1909Jahreshandelsberichte des Konsulats in Port Said 1 (Annual Commercial Reports of Port Said Okt. 1913 Consulate) Abt. II. Das Vize-Konsulat in Suez (Suez Vice2 Okl. 1867Consulate) Pol. Abt. Juli 1893 Jahresberichte des Vize-Konsulats Suez (Annual 2 Apr. 1887Reports of Suez Vice-Consulate) Pol. Abt. Dez. 1906 Jahreshandelsberichte des Vize-Konsulats in Suez 1 Jan. 1907(Annual Commercial Reports of Suez Vice Juni 1912 Consulate) Abt. II. General-Consulate) Pol. Abt.

The Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic

Catalog number

Title

Number of volumes

11

Date

2. DOCUMENT GROUPS CONCERNING RAILROADS 6724

1179311796

66676668

Wirtschaftliche Massnahmen auf dem Gebiet des 1 Eisenbahnwesens (Economic Measures in the Railroad Regions) Abt. II. Die Beteiligung deutschen Kapitals bei 4 Orientbahnen und die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung Kleinasiens (participation of German Capital in the Oriental Railways and the Economic Significance of Asia Minor) Abt. II. A continuation of the preceding collection. Abd. II 2

Okt. 1907Juni 1914 Aug. 1888Mar. 1905

Apr. 1905 Juni 1917

The reports in the next entry are extracts from the annual reports and commercial annual reports of the various consulates. Among the railroads discussed are the Anatolian, Baghdad, Mersin-Tarsus-Adana, Selanik-Monastir, Haifa-Damascus, and Hejaz. 1505915073

Eisenbahnangelegenheiten in der Türkei (Railroad Affairs in the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II.

15

Mai 1874Aug. 1912

3. SETS OF DOCUMENTS CONCERNING COMMERCE, COMMERCIAL RELATIONS AND COMMERCIAL TREATIES The first two entries contain a miscellaneous but vast body of information relating to commerce, agriculture, and mining in all areas of the Ottoman Empire. In 11654, for example, is an 87-page (handwritten on both sides) report on Cilicia composed in 1895 by the Beirut consular dragoman. In this section also are some of the annual commercial reports not found in the file relating to the appropriate consulate. 1162711677 66306643

Die Handels- und Schiffahrtsverhältnisse mit 51 der Türkei (Commercial and Shipping Relations with the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. A continuation of the preceding collection. 14 Abt. II.

Feb. 1874Okt. 1906 Okt. 1906Dez. 1917

12

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Catalog number

Title

Number of volumes

Date

Documents in the next entry contain much valuable information not only on the state of Ottoman trade and commercial relations with the various foreign nations but also on events within the Empire as seen by those nations. All volumes are entitled: Die Handels- und Schiffsverhältnisse zwischen [country listed] und der Türkei (Commercial and Shipping Relations between [country listed] and die Ottoman Empire). Abt. II. 17410

Argentinien (Argentina)

1

1714017142 17296

Bulgarien (Bulgaria)

3

China

1

17330

Aegypten (Egypt)

1

63459

Frankreich (France)

1

63473, 16797 17243

Griechenland (Greece)

2

Indien (India)

1

1672916730 17121

Italien (Italy)

2

Japan

1

17156

Montenegro

1

17261

Norwegen (Norway)

1

17166

Persien (Persia)

1

1701317015 63464, 16734 1703217034 17348 17374 13459-

Rumänien (Romania)

3

Russland (Russia)

2

Serbien (Serbia)

3

Tunis (Tunisia) Venezuela Deutsch-türkischer Handelsvertrag (German-

1 1 12

Jan. 1917Dez. 1917 Nov. 1898Juni 1917 Mai 1908Juni 1910Jan. 1890Mai 1913 Juni 1839Feb. 1892 Juli 1855Juli 1914 Apr. 1907Nov. 1911 Sept. 1839Juli 1914 Dez. 1896Mai 1898 Okt. 1900Juli 1914 Juni 1907Feb. 1908 Okt. 1901Okt. 1911 Juni 1886Aug. 1915 Juni 1846Feb. 1914 Apr. 1887Juli 1914 Jan. 1911 Juli 1912 Okt. 1906-

The Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic Republic

13

Number Catalog number 13460, 66556665 1177511788

Title

of volumes

Ottoman Commercial Treaty) Abt. II.

6653

Verhandlungen mit der T ürkei wegen 14 Abscliliessung eines neuem Handelsvertrag (Negotiations with the Ottoman Empire for the Conclusion of a New Commercial Treaty) Abt. II. Die Kündigung bezu. Revision der türkischen Handelsverträge und die türkischen Steuerreform (Announcements Concerning Revision of the Ottoman Commercial Treaties and Ottoman Tax Reforms) Abt. II. Continuation of die preceding Abt. II.

1179011791 67206721

Schiffsverhältnisse in der Türkei (Shipping Relations in the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Zollgesetzgebung in der Türkei (Customs Legislation in the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II.

1176611769

Date Sept. 1918

Dez. 1885Dez. 1906

Dez. 1873Apr. 1887

Mai 1887Okt. 1908 Apr. 1887Feb. 1906 Aug. 1907Dez. 1910

4. REPORTS CONCERNING VARIOUS TOPICS NOT INCLUDED IN PRECEDING SECTIONS Many of tlie entries that follow provide detailed information on specific subjects such as the Régie, supply of munitions, and Ottoman regulations on imports. 77817797

5233752340

66886689

Empfehlung diesseitiger Beamten, Kaufleute, 17 Techniker, unsw. an die Gesandschaften und Konsulate im Ausland (Recommendations of our [German] Officials, Merchants, Engineers, etc. to {lie Embassies and Consulates Abroad) Abt. II. Die Konsulate in der Türkei und deren 4 aussereuropäischen Besitzungen (Consulates in the Ottoman Empire and its Non-European Possessions) Pol. Abt. Eintritt deutscher Staatsangehöriger in türkischer 2 Dienste (Entry of German Citizens into Ottoman Service) Abt. II.

Juli 1892Dez. 1906

Nov. 1867Nov. 1886

Jan. 1907Okt. 1918

14

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Catalog number 54234 8459

1180711809

6675 6676 1181011811 66776678

1181211813 6679 11816 6687 6729 1167811684 11685 63438

Title

Number of volumes

Die türkische Konsulate in Preussen (Ottoman Consulates in Prussia) Pol. Abt. Lieferungen der Firma Krupp für die türkische Regierung (Deliveries of the Krupp Firm for the Ottoman Administration) Abt. II. Bestimmungen über die Einfuhr von Waffen und Munition nach der Türkei und die diesseitigen Beschwerden darüber (Regulations concerning the Import of Weapons and Munitions into the Ottoman Empire and our [German] Complaints regarding these Regulations) Abt. II. Continuation of the preceding. Abt. II. Bestimmungen über die Einfuhr von Sprengstoffen (Regulations Concerning the Import of Explosives) Abt. II. Bestimmungen über die Einfuhr von Sprengstoffen nach der Türkei und die diesseitigen Beschwerden darüber (Regulations Concerning the Import of Explosives into the Ottoman Empire and our [German] Complaints Regarding these Regulations) Abt. II. Einfuhr elektrischer Anlagen in die Türkei (Import of Electrical Goods into the Ottoman Empire) Dez. 1906 Abt. II. Elektrische Anlagen in der Türkei (Electrical Goods in the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Die chemischen Analysen bei die Einfuhr in die Türkei (Chemical Analyses for Import into the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Das Türkische Industriegesetz (The Ottoman Industrial Law) Abt. II. Das Leuchtfeuer-und Lotsenwesen in der Türkei (Navigational Lights and Pilots in the the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Das Leuchtturm auf Cap Guarafui (Tlie Lighthouse at Cape Guardafui) Abt. II. Die Beschwerden wider Lotsen, Hafen-und Zollbehörden in der Türkei und umgekehrt (Complaints against Pilots and Port and

1 1

Date Mar. 1885Aug. 1889 Jan. 1887Juni 1891

3

Apr. 1885Mar. 1906

2

Apr. 1906Juli 1914 Mai 1885 Jan. 1904

2

2

Feb. 1904Okt. 1914

2

Apr. 1899-

1

Jan. 1907Apr. 1911 Mar. 1900Sept. 1914

2

1 7

1 1

Nov. 1909Okt. 1918 Jan. 1873Juli 1904 Juli 1891Nov. 1903 Aug. 1864 Sept. 1884

The Zentrales Staatsarchiv of the German Democratic

Catalog number

1172311728 6646 1177111774

1345713458 67226723 6735

63435 11722 66736674 6730

11789 6666 67336736

11806

Title

Number of volumes

Customs Officials in the Ottoman Empire and Vice Versa) Abt. II. Continuation of the preceding Abt. II. 6 Continuation of the preceding Abt. II.

Republic

1

4 Das Türkische Tabaksmonopol und die Türkische Tabaksregie-Gesellschaft (The Ottoman Tobacco Monopoly and the Ottoman Tobacco Monopoly Company) Abt. II. Continuation of die preceding Abt. II. 2 Getreidehandel der Türkei (Tlie Grain Trade of 2 the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Einfuhr landwirtschaftlicher Maschinen in die 1 Türkei (Import of Agricultural Machinery into the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Finanzielle Verhältnisse und Bankangelegenheiten 2 in der Türkei (Financial Relations and Banking Affairs in Üie Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Zahlungseinstellungen in der Türkei (Suspension 2 of Payments in the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Handlungsreisende und Behandlung ihrer Muster 1 (Commercial Travelers and their Samples) Abt. II Marken und Musterschutz in der Türkei 2 (Trademarks and Copyrights in the Ottoman Empire) Abt. II. Die wirtschaftliche Auskunftstelle der deutsch4 türkischen Vereinigung (The Economic Information Bureau of the German-Ottoman Alliance) Abt. II. Schutz deutscher Interessen in der Türkei und 1 ihren Vasallenstaaten (Protection of German Interests in the Ottoman Empire and its Vasssal States) Abt. II.

15

Date

Okt. 1884Sept. 1905 Okt. 1905Dez. 1910 Mar. 1883Nov. 1893

Dez. 1893Dez. 1911 Sept. 1907Mai 1917 Mar. 1907Mar. 1914 Feb. 1863Okt. 1889 Nov. 1894Jan. 1914 Jan. 1907Dez. 1910 Nov. 1886Dez. 1912 Feb. 1915Nov. 1918

Juli 1894Juli 1906

16

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

HOLDINGS AT MERSEBURG I examined the second section of the archive at Merseburg only cursorily. My brief visit suggests that for scholars of the Middle East and Ottoman history, this section is secondary in importance to the holdings at Potsdam. Although there are some unique documents in the collection, the Merseburg section often contained carbon copies (for the Prussian government) of documents available in Potsdam. Also, the Merseburg materials relating to the Ottoman Empire frequently were embedded in broader classifications, for example, in reports on railroads in foreign states. The following entries are presented to suggest the types of materials available in Merseburg which supplement rather than duplicate the Potsdam holdings. Catalog number

Title

Date

2.2.1. Geheimes Zivilkabinett 1881-1918 Nr. 13 347 Preussen Beamt im türkischen Staatsdienst (Prussian Officials in Ottoman Service) Rep. 93E Ministerium der öffentlichen Arbeiten (Ministry of 1889-1890 Nr. 2356 Public Works) Getreideverkehr mit der Levant (Grain Trade with the Levant) Rep. 93E Ibid. 1904-1917 Nr. 396 Nachrichten über türkischen Eisenbahnen (Reports Concerning Ottoman Railroads) Rep. 120C Ministerium für Handel and Gewerbe (Ministry of 1886-1916 XDI15 Commerce and Industry) Nr. I Handelsverhältnisse mit dem Türkischen Reiche (Commercial Relations with the Ottoman Empire) 12 vols. Rep. 120C Newspaper clippings and copies of foreign (British, C VIII1 American, and Russian) reports concerning oil concessions, textiles, industry and mining in the Ottoman Empire and German consular reports on these subjects.

AGRICULTURAL TRENDS AND GOVERNMENT POLICY IN OTTOMAN ANATOLIA

1800-1914

CHANGES

IN

OUTPUT

AND

EXPORTS

Agriculture in Anatolia remained the economic mainstay of the region, die key source of wealth, and major employer of the populace throughout the period 1800-1914. Although relatively abundant statistics are available for the latter third of the period, the present lack of comparable data for the years up to approximately 1875 precludes precise measurement of the changing importance of agriculture and of changes within tine agricultural sector. The relative share of the population engaged in agriculture seems to have remained more or less fixed over time, at between 75 and 80 per cent, despite the major movements of peoples in and out of the area.1 The proportion of agricultural to total regional output was estimated some years ago by Vedat Eldem who calculated Ottoman Gross National Product for 1913. In his calculation, here presented only as a rough approximation of Uie agricultural share, agriculture directly contributed 59 per cent of Anatolian GNP while, in die Ottoman Empire as a whole, Anatolia provided 55 per cent of all agricultural income and 48 per cent of total GNP. 2 My own research most frequently has worked with taxation data and shows that one revenue source—die tidie— alone contributed nearly one-third of all tax revenues gathered in Anatolia during die final quarter of the nineteenth century. Odier taxes extracted wholly or partially from cultivators (ranging from the animal taxes to property levies) contributed anotiier share to the total, aldiough hard to measure.3 Still another way of suggesting the importance of agriculture is

Population issues in nineteenth-century Anatolia just now are beginning to receive attention; see, for example, recent works by Justin McCarthy, Leila Erder, S. J. Shaw and Kemal Karpat. For a discussion of some of the problems, see my "The Commercialization of Agriculture in Ottoman Turkey, 1800-1914,' International Journal of Turkish Studies 1/2 (19&0): 38-55. 2 Osmanh {mparatorlugmiun fhisadi $artlan Hakktnda bir Tetkik, Ankara 1970, pp. 302-303. See, for example, my "Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia, 1876-1908,' Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles 1973, p. 14 and sources cited therein. Re$at Aktan, 'Agricultural Policy of Turkey,' Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley

18

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

to note that some 80 to 85 per cent of all Anatolian exports in the final third o f the period consisted of agricultural products.4 There are few general statements that can be made about production trends in the period as a whole. Anatolia was being incorporated into the world market in the nineteenth century, a process some term peripheralization, and increasingly participated in the European-dominated world economy. Although the degree of incorporation differed markedly from area to area, it generally is true that export and production levels of various crops moved increasingly in unison with foreign demand. The case of dyestuffs readily illustrates the negative implications: yellow berries and madder root were major export commodities up until about 1850 and inconsequential thereafter because of the discovery of artificial substitutes. Anatolian silk production and exports, which would suffer a similar fate after the First World War with the spreading use of rayon, had enjoyed steady growth up to the mid-century point. Around 1865, however, silk production seemed doomed. While Far-Eastern sources to former Ottoman outlets in Europe climbed, disease attacked and destroyed silkworms in the Ottoman Empire, particularly in Anatolia. But global demand mounted to ever higher levels and so provided the stable framework of steadily increasing demand for recovery of the sector in the final quarter o f the period. 5 These two examples—madder root/yellow berries and silk—are deceptively simple in their linearity. The production and export of most crops rarely moved in such a steady fashion, either positively or negatively. Rather dramatic fluctuations over time were the rule, a response to frequent, irregular, and often unpredictable changes in demand. Cereal growing easily dominated the Anatolian countryside; while never falling below the three-quarters mark, it sometimes accounted for over 90 per cent of all land being tilled in a district or province. Wheat was grown almost twice as much as barley while maize, a distant third, more commonly was found along the Black Sea coast. When comparing wheat production of the midnineteenth century with that of the very early twentieth, an increase of about onethird is evident. This rise, precisely when American producers were capturing global markets, is at first glance surprising. It was due primarily to the construction of railroads in the Anatolian interior after 1890. With these rail links, the plateau areas began achieving more of their rich grain-growing potential and entering the world market in a significant way. Barley production

1950, estimates the total tax burden borne by the cultivator population during the nineteenth century. "®Quataert, 'Reform,' pp. 17-21 For comparative purposes, see §evket Pamuk, 'Foreign Trade, Foreign Capital and the Peripheralization of the Ottoman Empire, 1 8 3 0 - 1 9 1 3 . ' Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley 1978, p. 56, for statement that in 1911-13 foodstuffs and raw materials accounted for 89-93 per cent of total Ottoman exports. ^Extensive statistical evidence of the changes in the export levels of all the commodities discussed in this section is in Quataert, Reform,' pp. 186-408. For the case of silk in particular see ibid., ch. 10.

Agricultural Trends and Government

Policy

19

and exports, to meet European brewers demands, probably rose (proportionately) at least as much, but precise statistics are lacking. As cereal shipments from the empire as a whole apparently were declining at the end of the century, railinduced grain exports from Anatolia as much as quintupled. 6 Anatolian cotton production throughout the first half of the century seems to have eroded steadily as producers in the American South entered their golden age and the British government passed legislation harming the Levant trade. 7 By 1850, Turkish cotton exports, mainly from Izmir, were far less than half the levels of the late eighteenth century. Then the United States Civil War gave Izmir cotton producers their own brief prosperity while triggering the emergence of a new production center at Adana. There, during these war years, cotton production increased almost geometrically while at Izmir it reached levels unmatched during the remainder of the Ottoman period. Then came the thirty-year bust after the war, followed by a post-1900:, demand-inspired, boom interrupted only by the First World War. At Izmir, cotton production competed with other and more lucrative opportunities for the scarce labor and rose relatively modestly. But at Adana, the rising prices spurred cotton production to levels three times those at the beginning of the century. 8 Up until about 1908, increases in the amount of land under cultivation, about 5 per cent per annum, accounted for the boosts in production. Thereafter, cotton yields rose, from 75 to 95 lbs. per acre. 9 Grape growing, mainly for raisins, became one of the most valuable activities in the region during the century. In his mid-century report, Ubicini altogether neglects to mention grapes or raisins in his ranking of Asia Minor exports, indicating Angora wool, cotton and opium as the front runners. Similarly, when commenting on Turkish exports' he cites wool, silk, grains, opium and mohair, but not raisins or grapes. 1 0 By the 1870s, however, production in die Izmir area had achieved major status, above one million cwt. per annum, and raisin exports thereafter usually were the leading export (by value) from that city. 11 Just before die First World War some 17 per cent of the cultivated land in Aydin province was devoted to grapes. There, in adjacent Bursa

Ibid., ch. 8; P a m u k , 'Foreign T r a d e , ' pp. 53-54; for the annual g r a i n shipments on the A n a t o l i a n R a i l w a y s e e S o c i é t é d u c h e m i n de f e r O t t o m a n d ' A n a t o l i e , Bericht des Verwaltungsrathes Uber das Betriebsjahr ( 1. Januar bis 31, December...) for the years 1889-1914. 7

O r h a n K u r m u j , 'The Role of British Capital in the Economic Development of Western Anatolia, 1 8 5 0 - 1 9 1 3 , ' P h . D . d i s s e r t a t i o n , U n i v e r s i t y of L o n d o n 1974, p. 77, and Q u a t a e r t , 'Commercialization of Agriculture.' 0 Quataert, ' R e f o r m ' , ch. 11; Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam, Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter ZStA, AA) 6715. Bl. 184-189. 9 B . F . Nickoley, 'Agriculture.' in E. G. Mears (ed.), Modern Turkey, New York 1924, p. 288, and discussion of the Deutsche Levantintsche Baumwolle Gesellschaft, below; also, Quataert, ' R e f o r m , ' p. 293. 10 1

M . A . Ubicini, letters

on Turkey, part 1, London 1856, pp. 318-320 and 353-355.

' U . K . , House of Commons, Accounts and Papers, of Izmir (Smyrna) (hereafter A&P, 'Izmir').

1876-1911. Consular Reports for the District

20

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

province, and in the two Anatolian Railway provinces of Konya and Ankara was located one-lialf of the grape-growing acreage in the Ottoman Empire; Aydin province alone contained one-fifth of all Ottoman vineyards. 12 The value of raisin exports for most of the final third of the period ranked second among all commodities shipped from Anatolia. Both production and exports declined, however, as the vineshoot disease phylloxera ravaged thousands of acres. The Méline tariff that put customs barriers around France, the major outlet for Anatolian grapes, probably also contributed to the export decline that is visible in the final decade of the century. Therafter, until the First World War, grape production and exports seem to have recovered, to at least the levels of the 1880s. 13 Figs, the other major dried fruit export from Anatolia, enjoyed an almost unbroken record of increase in the final forty years but comparative data are lacking for the earlier period. In contrast to most goods during the 1873-1896 price depression, fig prices rose steadily and continued to increase. By 1908, fig exports from Izmir had risen almost fourfold in three decades. 14 The case of opium suggests an early nineteenth-century growth followed by a long decline in both absolute and relative terms. From the scattered data, a number of conclusions can be drawn. First, Anatolian exports of opium at the end of the period were substantially higher than earlier in the nineteenth century. A comparison of British imports of Turkish opium in the 1830s with those from Izmir only at the end of the century suggests a sixfold increase (in volume). Second, opium exports were in decline from at least the late 1870s and perhaps before. Although the statistics are vague, there seems to have been a drop in production as well during the final third of die era. 15 Tobacco production, by contrast, simply exploded at (lie end of the period in response to American demand. Suffering under the control of the Régie cointéressée des tabacs and from conflicts between that group of foreign shareholders and the Ottoman government, tobacco production had limped along until the early twentieth century. While in the empire as a whole production levels during the final pre-war years were two or three times those of die 1880s, the value of exports from the three major Anatolian centers of tobacco cultivation—Izmir, Samsun and Trabzon—at least doubled. Just before the war ' ^ T u r k e y , Orman ve Maden ve Ziraat Nezareti, Istatistik $ubesi, Ziraat Istalistiki, Asya ve Afrika-i Osrnani, 1325. Istanbul 1327, p. 5. These statistics, with some errors, are reproduced in Nickoley, 'Agriculture,' pp. 284-285. n

A&P.

U

A&P.

'Izmir;' Quataert, 'Reform,' ch. 9; ZStA, AA 6715, Bl. 30-36. 'Izmir;' Quataert. 'Reform," pp. 300-301; ZStA, AA6715. Bl. 179.

^^A&P, 'Izmir;' Nickoley, 'Agriculture,' p. 289, is incorrect in his estimate of 1880 opium production levels. For the A & P 1830-40 figures see Ibrahim I. Poroy, 'Expansion of Opium Production in Turkey and the State Monopoly of 1828-1939,' International Journal of Middle East Studies, 13/2 H981); 191 211.

Agricultural

Trends and Government

Policy

21

tobacco had become the most valuable Anatolian export, having doubled (from 6 to 12 per cent) its share of the total export trade. 16 The label 'Anatolian agriculture' thus describes a varied and diverse agricultural system that increasingly, if unevenly, was being absorbed into the world market. Global demand played an ever-larger, sometimes major, role in the lives of cultivators in the western provinces of Aydin and Bursa, selected areas on the Black Sea coast around Samsun and Trabzon, the railroad areas of Konya and Ankara provinces and the Adana plain region. Temporally, the preceding discussion has indicated, most of die changes occurred in the second part of tlie period, after die Crimean War. Elsewhere in Anatolia, it seems fair to generalize, the world economy played a less direct, less important role in the sense of dictating the kinds and mix of crops being grown. Thus, there seems to be fairly certain information about these relatively simple matters relating to the volume of exports although serious gaps in the data persist, especially in regard to actual production levels.

LAND,

LABOR

AND

CAPITAL

The issue of changing output and exports, however, seems quite fixed and settled when compared widi the issue of the mechanisms involved in those shifts. What were the landholding conditions under which the surpluses were produced and was a mode of production change involved? Few scholars would support the view that the development of commercial agriculture in Anatolia required die presence of a proletarianized agrarian work force laboring under slavelike conditions on vast overseer-run estates. And yet, there remains considerable uncertainty over the actual combination of land, labor and capital that generated the surpluses. Excellent studies on die relationship of large estates to commercial agriculture are available for the Ottoman Balkans but little work, so far, has been carried out relating to this problem in nineteenth-century Anatolia. 17 In Anatolia, a number of factors—ranging from the reassertion of meaningful central authority to labor shortages to the kinds of crops grown—militated against land agglomeration. Estate formation in the Balkans and in pre-nineteenth-century Anatolia occurred when the Istanbul government was weak and not in full control. With die emergence of a relatively powerful central regime that sought

16 Eldem, Iktisadi §arttari, table following p. 134, and sources cited in Quataert, 'Reform', p. 397. Data for the pre-1876 period presently are lacking. 17 See, for example, the many studies by lnalcik and his paper 'The Emergence of Plantation-Like Ciftliks: Landlords and Tenants,' presented to the 1979 annual meeting of the American Historical Association, New York City, which also discusses Anatolia. Other recent works with valuable data on Anatolian conditions include Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Agricultural Activities in a Bektashi Center: the tekke of Kizil Deli, 1750-1830,' Sudost Forschung 35 (1976): 80-83 and Yuzo Nagata, Some Documents on the Big Farms f(iftliks) of the Notables in Western Anatolia, Tokyo 1976.

22

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

to re-establish close relations with the cultivators and usually viewed estate formation as expressions of autonomous political strength, ongoing processes of estate formation by local notables may have been checked in some areas. The revitalized central regime was able to block untrammeled European exploitation of Ottoman lands when, in 1863, it promulgated legislation subjecting foreign landowners to the same regulations as Ottoman subjects. It seems that these laws considerably reduced Anatolian land accumulation by the capital-rich West and were part of a larger phenomenon in which the state denied Europeans the same assurances of land, labor and capital security available to them in other global areas. Until the end of the period Europeans continually expressed their disapproval over the unguarded position of agricultural investors in Ottoman Turkey. Large estates held by Ottomans and others certainly did exist both in the export-oriented areas as well as in those more concerned with local markets or subsistence agriculture.18 Many, however, contained high proportions of unused lands while others frequently concentrated on stock-raising, often a more profitable enterprise in this labor-scarce economy. Around the turn of the twentieth century, for example, a notable drove cultivators from their lands near Qayirhan to increase his own holdings for animal pasturage: the lands in question were scarcely 50 kilometers from the Anatolian Railway. 19 The manner of exploiting large cultivated holdings varied considerably — some great landholders combined lease arrangements, sharecropping agreements and the employment of wage laborers. Small landholders for their part often rented otherwise unused acreage from large estates to form commercially viable plots or increase their market-oriented lands. Whatever their form of exploitation, large estates devoted to commercial agriculture seem to have been exceptional, that is uncommon, phenomena in Anatolia. Most often, commercialization of agriculture followed paths of lesser resistance within the prevailing social structure and land regime. These local systems were surprisingly resistant to outside penetration. In the first half of the century, for example, European investors, who hoped to develop plantation-style estates, bought lands from a leading notable family near Izmir. The purchasers had planned to utilize a traditional labor force — local cultivators who had been furnishing the notables a certain number of days labor per year. The Europeans, however, could not perform the same socio-political functions as had the notables and so the cultivators simply refused to render the services. The disappointed new owners

fuller discussion of Anatolian landholding patterns, based on the Ziraat Istatistiki and Nickoley, 'Agriculture,' is available in Quataert, 'The Commercialization of Agriculture.' 19 Generally, see Inalcik, 'Emergence,' p. 10; for the example of Qayirhan see Ahmet §erif, Anadolu'da Tanin, Istanbul 1325, pp. 149-154. The landholding dispute recorded here dragged oil for at least a full decade.

Agricultural Trends and Government Policy

23

had to abandon their claims to the labor and fall back on sharecropping, a practice employed on many other estates in the area. 20 The major example of wage-laboring large estates is the oft-cited but still quite unusual case of the Adana region. Opened to cultivation only after the midnineteenth century, large commercial holdings could develop in this previously almost-uninhabited area precisely because, with few existing sets of relationships to disturb, the social costs were low. Here, there were few residents to fear and resist an economic transformation. While the individual land-holder pursued his profits, the state could take comfort from the new lands being brought into cultivation without any disturbance to the cultivating populace because, to repeat, there was hardly any. Here, purely monetary cost factors could reign unchecked. In most of Anatolia, however, such estates remained isolated phenomena and existing social relationships tenaciously held sway, tnalcik recently remarked that plantation-type big gifttiks were exceptions, occuring only in 'certain regions exposed to special conditions in the empire.' 21 Most new giftliks in Anatolia and Rumeli, he argued, came into existence on mevat lands—either waste areas or lands abandoned by cultivators. Plantation-like structures were formed on such newly-exploited lands beyond the alreadycultivated 'miri lands with their traditional small-sized gift-hane units.' 22 While additional research is needed to establish this point definitively, the notion of frontier lands being opened (or reopened) to cultivation reinforces the low social cost argument for the Adana area and also furnishes a plausible explanation for the commercially exploited large estates that are found scattered among the characteristically small holdings in Anatolia. Large estate formation, however, was not common on the new lands opened by railroad penetration at the end of the century. Here, rather, small holdings predominated. In this region, government flat apportioned land equally among the many diousands of new residents, muhacirin, settled there by the state. The government sought to create a class of small landholders along the railroads with precisely equal land shares although later, as Hutteroth has shown, unequal distribution patterns did creep in. 23 This case of refugee settlement in die relatively uncultivated frontier lands along the Anatolian and Baghdad Railway lines reiterates die importance of an assertive central regime in hindering large estate formation that it perceived as threatening to its own power. In this example, the state could do so because die refugee migrations provided a relatively rich manpower source. Thus while on some occasions such as the Adana case, the state condoned large-scale exploitation of former mevat lands

20 2

Xurrou|, 'British Capital.' pp. 141-142.

'lnalcik, 'Emergence,' p. 7.

22

Ibid., p. 9. •yi The sources consulted (Ziraat fstalistiki and Nickoley, 'Agriculture') do not suggest the prevalence of large holdings in the railroad areas.

24

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

because of the low social costs (and benefits in terms of tribal pacification), on others such as the railroad examples, it resisted estate formation and promoted smallholdings. Both the Adana and the railroad cases also illustrate the labor scarcities that plagued Anatolian agriculture throughout the nineteenth century. For its development, abundant land but few labor and capital resources were available. Generally, most of the evident output increases derived from the greater use of land, from more extensive rather than intensive agricultural exploitation although we have seen pre-war cotton at Adana as an exception. Migratory workers, immigrants and machines all alleviated the chronic labor shortage characteristic of the later period. In the frontier zone of Adana, the problem seemed especially critical and initially was met through the employ of tens of thousands (estimates vary from 50,000 to 100,000) of migrant workers—from Mosul, Bitlis, Harput and elsewhere—to bring in the harvest. The exact recruitment methods presently are unknown but it is clear the workers were cultivators who came to the plain for the May-June harvesting and then returned to the plateau for their own harvests during July and August.24 The setdement of refugees in the Adana area also may have reduced the labor problem but at considerable human costs. For example, most of the estimated 30,000 Nogay Tatars settled in Arifiye kaza of Adana after the Crimean War died from the heat while some 90 per cent of the Balkan refugees settled nearby some fifty years later suffered the same fate.2-'1 Around Izmir, in a tradition lliat perhaps dated back only to the 1850s, fig packers employed migratory labor to satisfy their brief but intensive labor needs Immigrant labor, as we have seen, combined with abundant land in the railroad areas to help spark production: in the decade following the opening of the Anatolian Railway, annual grain exports from the region leaped to nearly half a million tons, a sum representing new production. Commercial cereal-growing usually is associated with large, mechanized holdings a la Kansas but here, as noted, small plots apparently prevailed. Within the framework of this small landholding society, a marketing network quickly emerged to bring vast quantities of grain from the village to the railway. Three groups participated in the network. Istanbul merchant houses, often British or French-owned, bought the grain from fanners in the field and arranged for its shipment to the capital or to European markets. Alternatively, peasants, sometimes from quite considerable distances, personally brought the grain to the railroad stations and sold it on their own behalf. 'But a large number of the camel and cart drivers are also middlemen, and buy wheat and barley from the farmers to sell to the agents at the station, covering die cost of the transport out of the small profits they make.' 26 On busy

24

F o r discussion of the migrant workers s e e Bennel, 2 8 April 1881, 1 9 1 - 2 0 0 , FO 4 2 4 / 1 2 2 , Public Record O f f i c e (London). For harvest c y c l e s see Z S l A . A A 53738.B1. 167. Also, sources cited in Quataert, 'Reform,' pp. 1 6 7 - 1 6 9 on workers. 2

^ § e r i f , Tanin, pp. 221 and 231.

26

7 7 i £ Times (London), 6 J.inuary 1905, p. 13.

Agricultural Trends and Government Policy

25

days, over one thousand camels waited near the Ankara station to unload their cargoes. 27 This kind of mechanism, that gathered a very large surplus without transforming the land system, minimized the disruption of traditional life inherent in the expansion of commercial agriculture and may well have been the more common manner in which the Anatolian economy responded to foreign maiket opportunities. The refugees who provided much of the labor generating these surpluses were important advocates of modern agricultural equipment, another means of solving the labor problem that also boosted productivity levels in the Anatolian countryside. Generally, the immigrant settlers are credited with raising the level of agricultural technology in later nineteenth-century Anatolia. TTie railroad companies—the Anatolian and the Baghdad—and foreign sales representatives also were important channels through which the equipment, mainly plows and reapers, entered Ankara and Konya province. For example, between 1893 and 1905, American, English and German agencies based in Konya sold some 3000 plows and 450 reapers (not including any tools from firms located in Izmir or elsewhere). 28 In terms of per capita use of modern agricultural machinery and implements, the Adana area clearly led the rest of Anatolia as its large landholders sought to reduce dependence on migratory labor. Already in the 1880s hundreds of American-made reapers had been purchased by estate owners (who earned back the purchase price in a single season) and by 1900 McCormick annually sold about 150 reapers in the area. 29 Great steam plows and threshers soon were being acquired as well. The real surge in the use of this heavier equipment seems to have been after the turn of the century. In a 1900 report, usually well-informed German consular sources stated that, in the province, 1500 mowing machines, 30 steam threshers and two steam plows were in use. By 1907 large steam plows were seven in number and by the final pre-war decade '25 double steam plows, and 85 ordinary steam plows' as well as 'no fewer titan 1,000 mowing machines' and some 100 steam threshers were being employed. 30 A correspondent in 1908 reported that migratory laborers virtually had ceased coming for die harvest because of the extensive use of machinery. 31 Thus, it seenis, in about a quarter of a century these workers gained and lost a source of supplemental income, a series of dislocations clearly deserving of research. In the Izmir area, foreigners led the way in mechanization from the 1860s. Impressive amounts of modern equipment, often introduced by foreign agents from tlie port city as well as agents of local railroads, were purchased by

2o Quataert, 'Reform,' p. 174 and sources therein. 29 30

Ibid.. p. 166.

C f . ZStA, AA 8728, Bl. 57-59 and sources cited in Quataert, 'Reform,' p. 444, ns. 40 and 43. Times of India, 10 July 1908, clipping in Politisches Archives des Auswärtigen Amtes, Bonn, Türkei 152, Bd. 45.

26

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

American and European holders in the area. Although the region specialized in crops not requiring substantial use of machines — tobacco, figs, olives and grapes — it led the way in agricultural equipment imports (by value). 32 While the steam plows and threshers so popular around Adana were less common at Izmir, simpler implements such as reapers and iron plows (used in opium and fig production) 3 3 found a wide market. Between 1887 and 1907 some 60,000 American iron plows were sold, with annual sales of some 4,000 by the later date.34 Capital flowed into Anatolian agriculture from a host of private and public, Ottoman and European sources but the proportions presently are difficult to establish. The immigrants brought in an estimated £ E 14 million and some of this obviously was invested in agriculture.35 Private European contributors of capital ranged from British farmers around Izmir to German settlers at Amasya and Romanian Jewish colonists on the Anatolian Railroad. Institutionally, European capital sources included the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, the railroad companies and the German Levant Cotton Company (Deutsche Levantinische Baumwolle Gesellschaft). The Debt Administration sought to stimulate production in crops whose taxes it collected, and furnished capital through a variety of programs in the grape-growing and silk-raising sectors. For example, it gave away millions of disease-resistant vineshoots from its nurseries while establishing and maintaining the Silk Raising Institute at Bursa for the dissemination of improved techniques. Its de facto subsidiary, the Régie cointéressée des tabacs, to cite another example, provided interest-free loans to tobacco cultivators. The capital represented in the loans, however, probably only replaced previously private credit sources rather than constituting new capital infusions. Its additional capital input probably lay in the interest now saved by cultivators. The German-owned Anatolian Railway Company founded model farms and nurseries along the line and distributed free seeds and cutting to improve agricultural practices while in die Adana area, after 1904, the German Levant Cotton Company provided loans to cultivators in its successful effort to bolster cotton production. The Ottoman family with personal as well as state monies made substantial investments in agriculture. We hear, for example, of one imperial estate north of Antalya with intensively cultivated vineyards and rose gardens and another near Adana with over 300,000 dônlims of land. 36 The imperial farms

32

K u r m u f , 'British Capital,' pp. 154-155: also, Quataert, 'Reform,' p. 444, discussion in n. 42.

United States Consular Reports, vol. 74, p. 322, Harris at Izmir, July 1907 (hereafter Harris, 'Izmir'); Kurmuç, 'British Capital,' pp. 154-155. Harris, 'Izmir.'

34

Pamuk, 'Foreign Trade,' pp. *29, 340-357 and sources cited therein. 36

ZStA

A A 6638, Bl. 152-164; (!. Tsapalos and P. Walther, Rapport sur le domaine impérial de Tchoucour-Ova. Paris 1912.

Agricultural Trends and Government

Policy

27

appear as models of modern agriculture late in the period as Sultan Abdülliamid II lavished on them best technologies and techniques. The private Ottoman capital that financed agriculture often came from the much-vilified usurers who in fact furnished the vital links between rural countryside and urban or international market. Disliked by the Europeans because of their control or readier access to the agricultural surplus, these moneylenders provided much of the short term capital required by this agricultural society. In exchange for marketing rights or a portion of the crop, they advanced money before the harvest, during the winter or in times of crop failure. Late in the century the Ottoman government established a rival capital source. With antecedents dating back to the 1860s, the Agricultural Bank, established in 1888, thereafter served as a major institutional source of indigenous capital. In addition to its loans to hundreds of thousands of Anatolian cultivators, the bank directly funded a host of development programs aimed at raising the production standards of the population. Much of the capital provided by these Ottoman and foreign sources probably flowed to meet immediately pressing needs, such as food until the harvest and seeds for sowing, while some capital, particularly that of die government and the Debt Administration, went for infra-structural investment purposes. In general, with the exceptions of the Adana and to a lesser extent some of the Izmir region, Anatolian agriculture was severely under-capitalized. The poverty of Anatolian agriculture also seems reflected in the foreign trade statistics of the region. During the period 1840-1913, the growth of Ottoman foreign trade about matched that of global foreign trade but the foreign trade of Anatolia seems to have risen less rapidly than that of other areas in the empire. This conclusion, based on a comparison of growth rates of Ottoman and Anatolian exports during the 1840-1913 period, admittedly is impressionistic. Ottoman exports rose elevenfold, from £ 3.1 to £ 33.9 million (in constant prices), while those from Anatolia increased about tenfold, from £ 1.1 to £ 10.0 million (in constant prices). 37 Thus, Ottoman exports (primarily agricultural) overall increased somewhat more rapidly than did those (also heavily agrarian) from Anatolia. Also, the empire was shrinking steadily throughout the period — e.g., losing Moldavia, Wallachia, Bosnia Herzegovina and East Rumeli — and the proportionate place of Anatolia in the total Ottoman economy and trade should have risen. But, in fact, the Anatolian share of total Ottoman exports slipped, from 35 per cent in 1840 to 29 per cent in 1913.38 One readily-drawn conclusion is that Anatolia was less incorporated into the world market and its export agriculture was developing less rapidly.

37

P a m u k , 'Foreign Trade,' p. 28 and table on p. 42.

38

I b i d . , pp. 24. 28 and table on p. 42.

28

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

GOVERNMENT

POLICY

3 9

Foreign demand, although weaker in Anatolia than in many areas of the empire, nevertheless was the most important single factor accounting for the rise in production and exports. Other elements certainly entered in. For example, the constructive approaches of the Debt Adminislration to the problems of the silk industry helped in its regeneration, but foreign demand or its absence remained critical. The agricultural policy of the Ottoman state similarly operated within the constraints set by foreign demand and was an important but also secondranking element influencing agricultural change. Direct official efforts to promote agriculture can be traced back to the 1830s, when various agencies oriented to specifically agrarian problems ephemerally emerged. These short-lived bureaus were burdened with many non-agricultural duties and although sometimes containing persons with competence in the subject, more often were staffed and directed by those having little knowledge or interest in agriculture. As Anatolian involvement in the world market deepened after the Crimean War, official interest concomitantly mounted. In the 1870s an Ottoman Armenian agronomist trained in France became director of government programs in agrarian development and began sending candidates to Europe to acquire an education in the agricultural sciences. Thereafter, a cadre of agrarian specialists in the service of the state increasingly emerged. In 1892 a Scientific Committee for Agriculture, consisting of persons with considerable training or expertise in agriculture took over the consideration and articulation of the government effort. Agricultural schools were established at Istanbul and Bursa and more than 300 Ottoman subjects completed their training in the theory and practice of agriculture. Although the schools originally were formed to educate cultivators, they rather served as training grounds for government agronomists. The graduates reimbursed the state either by agreeing to enter government service for a specified period or by paying stiff fees. In addition to the two schools, the state founded model farms and fields in five areas of Anatolia, manning each with its agronomists trained in Ottoman or European agricultural schools. The fields were located at the increasingly export-oriented areas of Ankara, Konya and Adana as well as in the rich but less-integrated regions of Erzurum and Sivas. At the model fields, situated where they could be seen by cultivators coming to the regional market centers, the staffs used improved seed types, modern equipment and fertilizers to demonstrate more productive practices while also growing crops uncommon in the region. Other programs, operating independently of the fields, also aimed at improving techniques or introducing new crops. State efforts could be quite focused, such as die program to transfer rose cultivation and distillation techniques from Bulgaria to Anatolia along with the Bulgarian Muslim refugees. At other times, the efforts were more general; for example, a 1906 program purchased and distributed 130,000 kgs. of high quality wheat seeds to cultivators -ig J *The following discussion draws from Quataert, 'Reform,' chps. 3-6.

Agricultural

Trends and Government

Policy

29

along a broad stretch of the Black Sea coast and on the Anatolian Railway. Other programs involved, the encouragement of crops as varied as grapes, cotton, silk and potatoes. At the center of the government programs stood the Agricultural Bank. Like the schools, model farms and fields, and seed programs, the bank mirrored the late nineteenth-century self-image of the state as active agent in agrarian development, directly engaged with the cultivator in a joint, mutually profitable enterprise. The bank's specific task, as seen, was to provide credit and finance the development programs. For the twin goals, a special tithe surtax was collected and set aside. In the final quarter of the period, the bank lent some £ T 6 million at low interest to over 750,000 Anatolian cultivators. On both the human level and that of agrarian development, the loans helped cultivators seeking to avoid hunger and those engaging in experimental agriculture. On the level of government policy implementation, the bank did provide most of the capital for the official efforts and contributed an additional £ T 500,000 for the schools, fields and farms, seed distribution and machinery-testing programs. The bank's deficiencies were many, e.g., local notables sometimes controlled the branches for personal profit. In an example related by the early twentieth-century critic Ahmet §erif, it is hardly surprising to read that notables near Aya§ sought to seize bank-purchased seeds for themselves. But the grain did reach the cultivators despite the notables' maneuvers and to some extent, therefore, the bank was successful. 4 0 The cumbersome and tedious paper-work requirements to obtain loans contrasted with the fast, personal, informal (if more expensive) credit services of private moneylenders. The bank, moreover, insisted almost exclusively on real estate as collateral and this prevented the less well-off from using its facilities. Also, cultivators in areas of rising property values shunned the bank since it referred to out-of-date land surveys that grossly undervalued land put up to secure die loan. The state and the sultan both extralegally used bank funds to meet obligations unrelated to agriculture. This list of grievances could be extended but the point seems obvious. The bank's funds, moreover, simply were inadequate, too little and too late, a characterization that fits the overall agrarian development effort of the state as well. Although the programs displayed both sophistication and virtuosity, they were both underfunded and understaffed. Also, they emerged in the late 1880s and early 1890s, long after the Ottomans had lost their fiscal and economic independence. By then, huge chunks of the economy rested under the authority of the Debt Administration and the Régie while die tidies of the railroad provinces also had been set aside for foreign debt repayment. The best revenue sources now lay under direct European control and many of the development programs, such as in silk and grapes and even cereals, primarily seemed designed to assure 40

§ e r i f , Tanin, pp. 111-113, 147.

30

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

payment of the foreign debts. Certain of the programs, moreover, were misdirected, e.g., thousands of Turkish pounds were spent testing excessively complicated and expensive agricultural machinery quite inappropriate to Anatolian needs. At other times the state acted on a development opportunity after it had past, or nearly so, e.g., cotton in thé 1860s. In the meantime, it ignored certain sectors where imagination and creativity could have made important qualitative changes at little cost and with great profit, e.g., in olive oil and fig production. Similarly, little attention was given to developing sugar, a product which was successfully promoted in the Turkish Republic. A European state, in this case Austria, was deeply involved in the Ottoman sugar trade and could have lost large sums if import substitution programs had emerged. Rather, Ottoman agricultural development programs concentrated on commodities needed by the European customers and not on goods supplied from abroad to Ottoman consumers. This last point serves as a final reminder of the very narrow range of development options open. While it is easy to criticize the thrust and execution of the governmental agrarian programs, it remains true that the course of agricultural development was the wily one available. By virtue of its sensitive political position, however, the Ottoman state occupied a somewhat special place during the heyday of European imperialism. This position gave the Ottoman Empire a certain unique maneuverability and even strength in its relations with Europe that prevent us from too closely comparing its experiences with those of many states simultaneously being incoiporated into the Western-dominated world economy. The Ottoman regime in fact did derive real, if limited, benefits from economic development activities. In the Ottoman case, programs to improve agriculture did increase state revenues and thereby helped stave off disintegration of the formal political entity. In the end, however, such development merely reinforced the nature of its participation in the global economy and hardly could restore the economic and political strength and independence of the Ottoman state.

RURAL UNREST IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 18304914

A variety of natural, economic, and political factors affected the pattern of rural unrest in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Droughts, famines, or locust infestations, familiar parts of life for most of the period, often caused bread rioting but usually not sustained violence or rebellion. The commercialization of agriculture certainly was important. During this period, the growing commodification of the agrarian sector meant a mounting importance of the market economy, aimed at both domestic and international consumers. In its train, this development brought increasing sensitivity to market conditions and to changes in the business cycle. Thus, it is no surprise to find the international financial crisis of the mid-1890s mirrored in rural violence within Ottoman borders, this time directed against Armenians. Shifting demand for Ottoman crops, such as the bust in cotton exports after 1865 or the post-1900 boom in tobacco exports, surely affected the level and frequency of unrest in the countryside, although the microstudies needed to determine these relationships have not been done. Shifts in the terms of trade also influenced the patterns o f unrest. Between 1820 and 1873, for example, the terms of trade favored cultivators, then worsened for two decades before turning around again after 1896. State policy worked variously to aggravate conditions in the countryside. When it settled Muslim refugees from t'zarist Russia and its own lost Balkan provinces, for example, the state inadvertently challenged the position of established villagers in areas as widely scattered as Ottoman Bulgaria, the Black Sea coast o f Anatolia, and southern Syria. Tribal pacification policies that otherwise were quité beneficial to the body politic and the economy could bring the settling tribes into conflict with village communities—a notable example being the Kurdish settlement in eastern Anatolia. Overall, state policy, often in the form of the centralization of power, exercised a decisive impact on the timing, frequency, and intensity of rural unrest in the nineteenth century. The Land Law of 1858 certainly affected rural stability but in ways we do not yet understand fully because the actual impact of the law on landholding

32

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

itself is unclear and the subject of much controversy.1 The prevailing view has been that it primarily benefited the notables who formed large estates, but this consensus probably is incorrect. The law contained a complex bundle of capitalist and precapitalist features that sought to enhance state control, encourage production, and provide for title deeds and land registration. In certain regions, the law worked to dispossess smallholders. Thus, as is frequently cited, the law did help to promote the agglomeration of land by chieftains and notables in the Iraqi provinces. But elsewhere, it legalized and solidified small cultivators' claims to lands that they had been cultivating. In the Lebanon, around Jerusalem, and in the region of modern Jordan—three case studies for which research has been done—smallholders eagerly flocked to the land registry office and obtained official documents recording their claims. Smallholdings did remain characteristic of Ottoman Anatolia and parts of Syria, while large holdings emerged in some regions of Syria and much of Iraq. But the Land Law did not play the key role, confirming and ratifying rather than creating and establishing, these varied landholding patterns around the empire. What, then, are the correlations between the Land Law and unrest? If smallholders generally sought to register their lands, as the three examples cited above suggest—and it seems reasonable to assume so— then we can see that die Land Law probably raised peasant expections. Uncertainty over the meaning of the law and who might benefit from its implementation as well as the actual process of land registration may have added to rural unrest. During the nineteenth century, the state began to encroach upon life in the countryside in a manner rarely, if ever, seen during die long centuries of the Ottoman imperium. This encroachment was part of a larger process, the Tanzimat reform program of centralization and Westernization, that sought to rebuild Ottoman military and civil power to ensure the state's continued survival. Following a long period of decentralized rule in which regional magnates exercised considerable control over the land and the cultivators, the central state sought to reassert its authority, break the autonomous power of the local notables, and regain control over the land, the peasants, and their surplus. In addition, the state adopted policies of equality before the law and equality of fiscal responsibility. It sought to eliminate die tax-exempt status of the magnates and, hoping to increase aggregate revenue, ordered that all pay the same agricultural tax rate. Ironically, these reform programs accelerated, in some respects at least, the pace of Ottoman destruction, for they tore at the loyalty of its long-privileged Muslim subjects while straining relations between Ottoman Muslims and Christians. Vast waves of rural (and urban) unrest were unleashed, shaking the state to its foundation and recasting whole provinces as independent states.

' T h i s discussion draws from my analysis and (he sources cited in The Ottoman Empire: Its Economy and Society, 1300-1914, ed. Halil tnalcik and Donal Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire 1830-1914

33

These great cycles of rebellion and destruction were hardly unique examples of nineteenth-century rural discontent in the Ottoman Empire. That protest was an unexceptional part of everyday Ottoman life has often escaped the notice of historians because, in part, they have been bent on rediscovering the history of imperial institutions, reform programs, and Westernizers. Another reason that this history of rural protest lias been unrecovered lies in its nature. To begin with, it was located in die (generally illiterate) countryside, away from the urban seats of governmental and other record keepers. Examples occasionally do appear in the written record: in 1880, central Anatolian villagers murdered several government officials seeking to collect arrears in taxes while, further west in the same area, other peasants resisted administrators seeking to transfer grain from their famine-stricken village. 2 Only when it became very large, widespread, or violent, or caused substantial declines in state revenues, might rural unrest become a focus of official attention and outside concern. Because most protest was neidier violent nor widespread, it has remained largely invisible—a force surely present but an undocumented one. Peasant avoidance certainly was die most common form of protest, a refusal to perform duties or pay taxes or enter the military, a posture that might end in flight. But this avoidance could remain unrecorded unless very large numbers were involved, such as the mass movement of Christian peasants from the Ottoman Bulgarian provinces to independent Serbia in the mid-nineteenth century. Other forms of protest included social banditry, which flourished with the support of villagers and nomads whose anger these bandits articulated. There also were frequent open insurrections against the state and rural elites by both peasants and tribes. Intersectarian violence, when Ottoman cultivators fought with one another instead of against the rulers, sometimes was a degeneration of social banditry or insurrection that had begun as anti-elite protest. Rural unrest seems to have been particularly widespread and violent during three periods. The first, from 1839 until about the mid-1860s, was characterized by resistance to die implementation of the Tanzimat reforms. These rebellions were, quite probably, the greatest of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. In the Balkan areas, these struggles mutated into nationalist revolutions. In the Arab provinces, important uprisings occurred around Aleppo and Damascus and in the Hawran; of particular importance was die Kisrawan rising of 1858-61, which also derived from the Land Law of 1858. The next cluster of violence was directed against the Armenians in eastern Anatolia. Beginning in die 1890s and reaching its climax two decades later, in 1915-16, it owed much to the settlement of the Kurds and to Tanzimat promises of equality. The third period includes the growing disorders in the B;ilkan, Arab, and Anatolian rural areas that characterized f i e last few years, about 1902-8, before die Young Turk Revolution.

2

M y t h a n k s to Fat05 K a b a of the S l I N Y - B i n g h a m t o n Anthropology D e p a r t m e n t for these references, drawn from the Great Britain Foreign O f f i c e reports.

34

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Between about 1863 and the early 1890s, rural rebellions probably were less widespread than at any other time, with the notable exception of Bulgaria, where violence reached new heights in 1875-76, just before the final break from Ottoman control. It seems unlikely that the overall decline in rural violence is only apparent as a result of reporting flaws. If anything, sources for the late nineteenth century are incomparably richer than for the earlier part of the period. Instead, the quiescence derived from several factors. The locus of much unrest had been in the Balkan areas; by the mid-1860s, many of these had achieved de facto independence, with the additional exception of Macedonia, where rebellions continued into the twentieth century.3 In the Arab and Anatolian areas, the decreased incidence of social unrest can be explained only partially on the basis of the available evidence. Increasing central control and taxation had been in effect for over three decades and had become institutionalized. More concretely, the military power of the central state was vastly greater than it had been around 1800. The regular army consisted of not more than 24,000 soldiers in 1837; by the end of the next decade, their number had risen to perhaps 120,000 regular troups and came to be supported by the telegraph and, in some areas, by railroads as well. 4 The peasants had thus become accustomed to taxes that evolved from being a novel to a normal part of the rural landscape; in any event, they were less able to resist. The case of the notables is slightly different. In the face of Tanzimat policies, they almost everywhere lost direct control over the land, some revenues, and their tax-exempt status, to boot. Their relative disinclination to open resistance probably owes something to their retention of considerable local prominence, power, and wealth. Toward the end of the century, however, Young Turk resistance to Abdiilhamid's regime found support among many provincial notables whose positions had been deteriorating in the face of the increasingly effective central rule of the sultan. The formation of the Public Debt Administration, in 1881, probably also weakened notables' fiscal hold as tax fanners when its salaried agents collected agricultural taxes on behalf of the foreign consortium. Among the insurrections arising from implementation of the Tanzimat, the Bulgarian peasant rebellions are the best known. Their origins are well documented and arise directly out of the 1839 reform decree. The land regime in the Vidin area combined pre-Ottoman practices with a distorted version of the timar system. In a turn of events almost unique in Ottoman history, Muslim lords, descendants of sipahis, and urban notables became the true owners of state land during the eighteenth century, when they also seized control of the local Fikret Adanir, '"line Macedonian Question: T h e Socio-Economic Reality and Problems of its Historiographie Interpretations," international Journal of Turkish Studies (Winter 1984-85): 4 3 64. Adanir holds the opinion that socioeconomic factors were not a cause of the Macedonian rebellions. ^ E d o u a r d Engelhardt, La Turquie et le Tanzimat 281-82.

(Paris: A. Cotillon et Cie, 1882, 1884), 1:89, 2:

Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire 1830-1914

35

administration.5 In return for a cash payment to a strapped central treasury, these groups emerged as a class of great landlords and took over "all" state lands. The lords were Muslim because the lands earlier had been classified as frontier territories. By customary practice predating the Ottoman arrival, the sipahis collected certain extra dues and taxes not demanded in other provinces, such as one or two months' sowing labor, a cart of wood, or a cartload of corn. Indeed the peasants owed as much or more to the lord as to the state. When the 1839 decree abolished all forms of compulsory services, peasants in the Vidin region quickly made clear their refusal to perform them anymore. When called in to decide, the state straddled the fence. Like the czar's emancipation of the serfs, the sultan's decree attempted to reconcile the irreconcilable, to abolish the services due without harming the landowners. As a result, landholders generally had their way and, the reform regulations notwithstanding, services and feudal-like dues continued. In 1850, a revolt erupted in Vidin, its underlying cause confusion and disorder in the land system. In die ten years since proclamation of the Tanzimat, the state had stabilized peasants' possession of state lands by increasing the number of family members who could inherit. The lords, for their part, continued to take dues and services ¡by force, dominating the local councils and thwarting the authority of the governor sent to control them. Peasants demanded abolition of the lords' rule and,; apparently, deeds granting them direct ownership of the land. The governor of Vidin concurred, seeing the measure to be essential for peace. But the Istanbul authorities required a three-step procedure: continuation of state ownership of the land, abolition of diose obligations to the lords that the central government deemed illegal, and payment of the remaining "legal" obligations that cultivators would render partly to the lords for life and partly to the central treasury. This plan flew in the face of peasants' expectations since they intended to keep the lords' former revenues and pay nothing either to the, government or the lords. By the time the state finally decided in 1851 to sell the lords' lands to the peasants, peasants were seeking to obtain the land without compensation. These discontents then meshed with mounting Bulgarian nationalism and culminated in the great revolt of 1875-76 and Bulgarian independence.6 A parallel set of events occurred farther west in the Balkans, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There, as in Bulgaria, a three-way struggle pitted Muslim notables interested in retaining tax revenues against the state, while the Christian peasants sought to take over the land that the notables held. Unrest began immediately after proclamation of the Giilhane decree. The notables orchestrated the first

5 Margaret L. Meriwether, "Urban Notables and Rural Resources in Aleppo, 1730-1830," International Journal of Turkish Studies (Summer 1987): 55-73.

Halil Inalcik, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basxmevi, 1943) and "Application of the Tanzimat and its Social Effects," Archivum Ottomanicum (1973): 97-128.

6

36

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

rebellions against the centralizing state but, later on, peasants rose against (lie lords. In 1858-59, perhaps partially inspired by fear of the Land Law and its provisions for cultivators' registration of lands, long-established feudal families incited the peasants to revolt and prevented imposition of Ottoman central control. With the help of the peasants, these families opposed the Tanzimat reforms and retained dieir timars or, where they had been converted, their tax farms. They kept the majority of the surplus and dominated both Muslim and Christian peasants, despite strong state efforts in the early 1860s to break landlord power. Over time, however, the programs of the central government weakened the notables. In 1874-75, Herzegovinian Christian peasants rose against Muslim landowners in a number of villages where tax farmers had been trying to collect taxes during a time of bad harvest. The rebellion spread all over Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Great Powers became involved and the rebellions ended with the removal of Ottoman authority, similar to the process that brought about the loss of Bulgaria.7 Widespread rural unrest in nineteenth-century Anatolia, on the magnitude of the 1850s and 1860s uprisings in the Balkans or the Arab provinces, seems to have been relatively unusual. Although perhaps underreported by historians, more likely this relative peacefulness stemmed partly from the moral economy of the peasantry in Anatolia, a culture disinclined to use violent protest to register its discontents. Anatolian peasant quietude certainly was tied to the continuing prevalence of small family holdings as the dominant form of land tenure, a distribution pattern inherited from the pre-nineteenth-century era and sanctified by the Land Law of 1858. Not diat Anatolia was devoid of unrest: The history of rural Anatolia was one of incessant active and passive protest, from one end of the period to the other. What seems different about Anatolia is the small scale of its protest. Implementation of the Tanzimat reforms there brought immediate and varying forms of resistance. Sometimes die sumptuary aspects of the new state policies were opposed passively: in the small town of Bergama, for example, most people continued to wear their turbans and conical hats, ignoring the example of the Westernizing bureaucracy who adopted the fez. Against the new fiscal measures, the protests took a more active shape: in 1841, for example, a low-ranking member of the ulema in Adapazan called on the populace not to pay the new, higher, imposts since they already were unable to pay their present taxes. At the same time, notables at Yalva?, themselves subject to heavier taxes under die new policies, sought to gain allies and urged the populace at large to resist the new levies. A notable in the Bala area south of Ankara understood that the Tanzimat's removal of tax exemptions meant taxes on large state properties in his possession, so he incited a tax revolt among some 7

See, for example, A. Cevad Eren, "Tanzimat," isiàm Ansiklopedisi II (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi, 1970): 709-65; see also the sources cited in Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modem Turkey (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1977), 2: 149-60.

Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire 1830-1914

37

400 villagers. When arrested, he complained that although his taxes had increased sharply, those of poor villagers had more than doubled.8 During the early reign of Mahmud II (1808-39), social bandits had been common, often serving as unpaid military forces responsible for maintaining order. By the 1830s, thanks to the reimposition of central authority and the rise of the larger, salaried military force, many bandits had vanished from western and central Anatolia.9 But social banditry persisted throughout the period, sometimes focusing on foreign travelers with the connivance of local cultivators and authorities. Tribal unrest, for its part, faded as the century progressed and had ceased to be an important factor in most areas by the 1870s. In the Armenian massacres of the 1890s, however, several factors seem to have been at work. During the worldwide financial crisis of the mid-1890s, Turkish or sedentarized Kurdish peasants may have sought to escape from Armenian moneylenders through a violence that then focused on the Armenian community in general. There also is the issue of the disintegrating tribal structures as state centralization proceeded: The power of the Kurdish beys over their tribes was fading just as Tanzimat pledges of equality and an awakening nationalism caused some Armenian villagers to become increasingly assertive. The famous Sasun massacre, for example, occurred when the local Armenians refused to continue yielding to the extortionary demands of nearby Kurdish chieftains. Their authority over both the villagers and the tribes threatened, the chiefs resorted to massive force to maintain themselves in power. Using a variety of appeals that may have included shared ethnicity as well as economic advantage, the chiefs mobilized the tribes against the peasants and thus retained control. The Muslim refugees' encroachment on common lands also contributed to disorders all over Anatolia. In the 1870s, for example, considerable friction existed between the newly arrived settlers and villagers in the coastal areas around Black Sea Samsun. The worst, however, probably was over by the beginning of the 1880s. 10 Factory burnings also are an integral part of the social history of nineteenth-century Anatolia, although these protests focused on particular establishments and never developed into a Luddist variety of protest against factory qua factory. Examples include factory sackings at Bursa in the 1860s, Bergama in the 1880s, and U§ak in 1908.11 In the carpet-making center at U§ak in March 1908, village spinners marched into the town and sacked three

8

tnalcik, "Social Effects"; Osrnan Bayatli, Bergama'da (Izmir: Teknik Kitap ve Mecmua Basimevi, 1957), 7.

yakin tarih olaylari XVIII-XIX.

yiityil

®Musa Cadirci, "II. Mahmud döneminde (1808-1839) Avrupa ve Hayriye Tüccarlari," in Social and Economic History of Turkey, 1071-1920, ed. Osman Okyar and Hali] Inalcik (Ankara: Meteosan L.S., 1980), 237-41; M.C. Ulufay, Saruhan'da eskiyahk ve halk hareketleri (Istanbul: n. p., 1955). ' "Great Britain Foreign Office reports. 1 ' D o n a l d Quataert, "Machine Breaking and the Changing Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia, 1860-1908," Journal of Social History (Spring 1986): 473-89; and Bayatli, Bergama.

38

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

mechanized spinning mills that jeopardized their livelihoods. Crop cycles, by themselves, were not catalysts of major protest. The terrible killing famine of 1873-74 provoked only a few bread riots in various regions. Later, however, a broader series of bread riots accompanied crop failures and shortfalls in 1906-08. In June 1908, for example, Sivas-area villagers marched into the town and with the urban discontented sacked local granaries. The response at nearby Kayseri was more pacific as 12,000 gathered and prayed for rain. 12 At Erzurum, however, fears about food shortages combined with a taxpayers' protest dating back to 1906 over an increase in the poll and animal taxes. The revolt combined rural and urban dissidents and persisted until the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. Without exception, these protests occurred in the presence of failing or threatened crops. But poor crop conditions required a cadre of revolutionaries who mobilized, organized, and articulated the discontents. That is, peasant discontent was a constant but usually required some outside variable to erupt in open revolt or insurrection. These demonstrations eloquently expressed the weakened legitimacy of the state and helped pave the way for the Young Turk seizure of power.13 In the Arab provinces, rural unrest erupted with considerable frequency until die 1860s. In 1834, for example, the fellah of Palestine rebelled against forced labor, against conscription of Muslims into Muhammed ' Ali's army, and against the/erde, a levy like the poll tax previously reserved for Christians that Muhammed Ali imposed on Muslims. Lebanon had four or five rural uprisings between 1820 and 1861. Among these were revolts in Mount Lebanon in 1840, Alawi risings during the 1850s, and Druze insurrections in the Hawran in the late 1870s. Many revolts primarily fought remnants of the old agrarian regime and the increasing fiscal pressures of the reform-minded central state, among them insurrections in Palestine during 1852 and 1854 and in Syria during 1852, 1854, 1862-64, and 1865-66. Peasant rebellions in the Fertile Crescent were most common in remote districts where villages usually were more prosperous than on the plain or near important cities. In many mountainous districts, the local lords, who usually were die tax farmers, led peasant revolts against the centralizing efforts of the state. In this case, the protests were like the early ones in Bosnia and Herzegovina from about 1839 to the 1860s. In other instances, peasants rebelled against local lords or intermediate tax formers weakened by the intrusion of central power,14 ^ D o n a l d Qualaert, "The Economic Gimale of the 'Young Turk Revolution' in 1908," Journal of Modern History (September 1979): D1147-61. ^ I b i d . , and Quataert, "Machine Breaking." '^Gabriel Baer, "Fellah Rebellion in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent," reprinted in Fellah and Townsmen in lite Middle East: Studies in Social History, ed. Gabriel Baer (London: F. Cass, 1982), 253-323: Marwan Buheiry, "The Peasant Revolt of 1858 in Mount Lebanon," in Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East. ed. Tarif Khalidi (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press. 1984): Edmund Burke III, "Changing Patterns of Peasant Protest in the Middle East, 1750-1950," paper presented to the 1986 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association; and Burke, "(Inderstanding Arab Protest Movements," Maghreb Review II, I (1986): 27-32.

Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire 1830-1914

39

Perhaps the best documented example is the 1858-61 revolt of the Maronite peasants of Kisrawan against their Maronite overlords. In Kisrawan, after the Emir Bashir II had removed the tax farmers' judicial authority, Muhammed 'Ali and then the Ottomans further weakened the power of the Khazin family of Maronite sheikhs. The revolt seems to have stemmed from the desire of some prosperous cultivators connected to the Beirut silk trading center to obtain more land to grow mulberries and meet the demand for cocoons. The Khazin overlords, however, refused to alienate land and thus blocked this expanding peasantry. Khazin power had weakened subtantially, but, increasingly strapped for money, they demanded all kinds of feudal presents. Still worse from their perspective, massive quantities of European made aims recently had flooded into peasant hands. When the revolt erupted, its leaders appealed to the call of the Hat-ti Humayun for universal equality. 15 The rebellion was a great success for the peasants since, by its end, the Khazins had lost much of their land. In addition, die state abolished feudal privileges and proclaimed equality before the law. Unlike the Kurdish chiefs facing opposition from the state and their own followers, the Khazin lords had not maintained military superiority and so lost the day. 16 The Kisrawan demands for changes in traditional lord-peasant relations closely parallelled those of the Vidin peasants during the 1850s in their efforts to gain full control over the land. They also are echoed by the actions during 188990 of the Druze peasants in the Hawran, who rebelled against their Atrash lords as die Ottoman state sought to subdue the district. In common with the Kisrawan rising,die Druze rebellion ended feudalism and began the extension of new relations of production.17 It seems evident that the peak of open unrest occurred between die 1840s and the middle 1860s, in many cases as popular and notable responses to government fiat. The imposition of the Tanzimat reforms meant a changed agrarian order, with greater (but not full) central control of the land, more of the surplus going to die imperial treasury, and higher taxes for the peasantry. But notables continued to hang on with considerable success, using their membership in local councils and other bodies to maintain dieir influence and power over the peasantry. Extreme confusion reigned in the countryside everywhere in the empire, since the state declared removal of the old order but could not fully

15

B u h e i r y , "The Peasant Revolt of 1858," 299.

^ A c c o u n t based on Baer, "Fellah Rebellion in Egypt." See article 6 of the 1861 "Regulation for the Administration of Lebanon" in The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, ed. J.C. Hurewitz (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press 1975) i- 34749. 17 Burke, works cited in n. 14 above. In an otherwise useful analysis, Baer overly stresses the uniqueness of the Kisrawan affair: "Only once in Middle Eastern History did poor and wealthy peasants revolt together against a feudal-like aristocracy" (294). H e r e B a e r e x c l u d e s the Anatolian and Balkan areas of the Ottoman Empire from his Middle East.

40

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

eliminate it. 18 As in the Vidin case and that of the Kurdish beys, it may have been unwilling to do so. Programs to eliminate the lords generated strong resistance among the notables while the increase in taxes angered them as well as the peasants. Resistance to the new conscription laws prompted abandonment of Muslim villages in the first decades of the reform era just as the 1908 inclusion of Ottoman Christians in the conscription process led to their large-scale emigration from the empire. Sharecropping expanded at the same time that state taxes on peasants were increasing faster than agricultural productivity. Finally, the peasants demanded that landlordism be abolished and rebelled against a state that was not willing to sacrifice the estate owners. In the Vidin region, the fact that peasants were Christians and the owners were Muslims gave the social conflict a religious and finally a national dimension. 19 Social conflict indeed played a vital role in many nineteenth-century nationalist movements. Peasants hoped to gain from the reform legislation and resented state efforts to acquire coveted notables' lands. Thus, giftliks undermined Ottoman control of die Balkans. 20 Although social struggle between the Kurds and Armenians also took on a religious dimension that incompletely evolved into a national struggle, tendencies toward land agglomeration and market agriculture do not seem to have played a catalytic role. Lebanon and the Bulgarian lands each were important seats of insurrection. Each possessed unusually high population densities and a strong commitment to commercial agriculture. Whether feudal-like relations were stronger in these two regions than elsewhere is uncertain. In Anatolia, for its part, the prevalence of small peasant family farms played a role in the relative lack of uprisings, as did the relatively low level of agricultural commercialization (compared to that of the European provinces) and the relatively lower economic growth rate after 1850 (compared to that of European and Arab provinces). A relative absence of open insurrection should not be interpreted to suggest the absence of serious discontents or oppression. Peasant avoidance, not insurrection, was the common form of coping with crisis or difficulties. For many, open revolt remained the exceptional method of expressing rural discontent.

18

lnalcik, Bulgar

Meselesi

D. Mordtmann, Anatolian,

and "Social Effects." Also see, for example, the 1850s reports in A. Skizzen

und

Reisebriefe

aus

Kleinasien,

ed.

Franz

Babinger

(Hannover: Heinz Lafaire, 1925), e.g., 116, 139. 19 2

lnalcik, "Social Effects."

®Suraiya Faroqhi, "Agriculture and Rural Life in the Ottoman Empire ca. 1500-1878," New Perspectives on Turkey (Fall 1987): 32-33, discussing the research of Stoianovich and Inalcik.

THE YOUNG TURK REVOLUTION: OLD AND NEW APPROACHES

In many areas of Middle East studies, revolutions—from the 8th century Abbasid to the 20th century Egyptian cases—have been treated as multidimensional phenomena, filled with actors impelled by varying, often conflicting interests and motives. Scholarship has come to perceive these revolutions as products of commingled political, intellectual, social and economic forces, and each event as the unique creation of a particular blend o f the various elements. The nature of this mix, in turn, has been seen to determine thé subsequent post-revolutionary behavior of the various groups in society. Yet when we focus on the case of the so-called Young Turk "Revolution" of 1908; we find that most studies have been strikingly unilinear in their analyses. The limited approach has colored our view, both o f the Revolution and of subsequent events. My purpose here is to examine the historiography o f the Young Turk Revolution and then to offer some possible alternative interpretations. The extant literature on the Young Turk Revolution falls into three major categories: -

Works of the largest group of scholars stress the political and ideological origins of the Revolution;

-

Writings of a circle of publicists (generally non-historians) describe labor unrest immediately following the outbreak of the Revolution; and

-

Odier academic contributions interpret the event as a bourgeois revolution in the Marxist scheme of history.

The Marxist school, however, lacks both concrete data connecting that outburst to the specific climate of the pre-revolutionary period and a clear-cut picture of the actual Ottoman class structure.

42

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

The account of the Revolution that has gained the widest currency stresses political events. Its main lines can be summarized as follows. During the 19th century Ottoman efforts to save their decaying empire focused increasingly on Westernization. Many Ottoman officials and intellectuals gradually perceived that the previous practice of borrowing Western military apparatus was inadequate and became convinced that nothing less than wholesale adoption of Western models would do. This perception of Western models as superior yielded the notion that perhaps the secret of European strength lay in democratic constitutional forms (the German and Russian models were conveniendy ignored). In 1876 favorable circumstances for the establishment of a Western-style government emerged and a constitution was promulgated. A few months later, alas, Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), the arch-enemy of Ottoman liberals and their advocates, prorogued the newly formed parliament, de facto suspended the Constitution, and embarked on his tyrannical reign. During his régime the burgeoning reform movement went underground where intellectuals, often in exile, nurtured it until 1908. These exiles had no political power, but they wrangled and argued over the form of die future state. Many historians have focused dieir research on the varying fortunes of the intellectuals. Their ideological formulations, factional disputes and incorruptibility, as well as palace corruption, are the main subjects of several well-researched studies, including those by Karal and Ramsauer. The narrative becomes discontinuous, however, as the focus of attention shifts away from the intellectuals to a new group, the discontented junior military officers within die empire. These young officers, of lower social origins, had graduated from die excellent military schools created as part of the government's effort to develop a modern, efficient and powerful army. In the process they had contracted other, non-military. Western ideas as well. Disgusted with the existing corruption, weakness and inability of their government to prevent further humiliation and political disintegration, these officers began to form secret organizations, notably the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), and to plot revolution. In late 1907 the officers and the émigrés (who now occupy a minor place in die narrative) established ephemeral contacts, with few practical results. During May 1908 some officers, fearing imminent discovery by palace agents, decided on action. Several had fled to the Macedonian hills by early July ; there they raised the standard of revolt. Within weeks the revolt spread throughout die army and spilled over into the civilian population of the region. During the third week of July 18,000 troops were transported from loyalist Anatolia to suppress die uprising, but immediately defected and went over to their comrades-in-arms Now the officers proclaimed the 1876 Constitution in various areas of Macedonia and issued an ultimatum to the Istanbul government for its general restoration. The palace vacillated for a few days and, on July 23rd,

The Young Turk Revolution: Old and New Approaches

43

capitulated. Streets quickly filled with a joyous citizenry (whose social composition is not indicated), linking arms in brotherhood and shouting "liberté, égalité, fraternité." In the view of our first group of authors, whose interpretations usually mirror those of the officers themselves, this was the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.1 Several disturbing elements, however, are embedded in this scenario of events. First, the question of timing remains only partially explored; also, why did the military revolt spread so rapidly? Was the officers' instinct for selfpreservation the only reason that the Revolution occurred in the early summer of 1908 and not in 1907, or even later in the year 1908? The other old-time favorite hypothesis used to explain the timing of the outbreak—the officers' fear of what King Edward and Czar Nicholas might be plotting at their June 1908 Reval meeting—has been discredited, but no alternative has emerged. Second, it is not entirely clear why the enlisted men from Anatolia—in this period the backbone of the Ottoman army—went over to the rebels. The ambiguity is of some importance, since tliis defection was vital to the success of the revolutionaries. Many scholarly accounts speak of a rising tide of civilian and military unrest in Anatolia. For example, the Izmir region had been the site of widespread revolts among cultivator conscripts. As early as 1902, when some 4,000 soldiers pillaged the city of Izmir, the region had been in turmoil. Officers and men stationed in or near the city had mutinied for back pay in 1906, in June 1907, and again in March 1908. In early July 1908, when the government sought to suppress the Macedonian revolt, it ordered up the Anatolian reserves for transport to Selanik. At îzmir the collected reserves refused to embark until receipt of their back pay; and, in the interior, the troops demanded similar payments before boarding the waiting trains.2 In this liistoriographical school there are implicit allusions to nonpolitical motives for revolt which, however, are left unexplored. Most presentations of this type, based on the writings of Young Turk officers and their circle, stress the presence of a propaganda network engaged in winning over the Anatolian civilian and military population; but they emphasize the agents, not U non-exhaustive listing of works, which present the widely accepted view, includes the following: Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics, 1908-1914 (Oxford, 1969); Yusuf Hikmet Bayur. Turk Inkilap Tarihi, 3 vols. (Ankara, 1940-1943); Ismail Hami Danijmend. kahh Osmanh Tarihi Kronolojisi, IV, reprint (Istanbul, 1972); Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanlt Tarihi, VIII: birinci mefrutiyel ve istibdat devirleri, 1876-1907 (Ankara, 1962); Ahmed Bedevi Kuran, tnkilap Tarihimii ve Jon Tiirkler (Istanbul, 1945); and Osmanh Imparatorlugunda ve Turkiye Cumhuriyetinde inkilap hareketleri (Istanbul, 1959); Ernest Edmondson Ramsaur, Jr., The Young Turks: Prelude to the Revolution of 1908, reprint (Beirut, 1965); and Faik R. Unat, [kind Mefrutiyetin ilani ve Otuzhir Mart Hadisesi (Ankara, 1960). Ahmet Niyazi, Hatirat-i Niyazi (Istanbul, A.H. 1326) is a typical contemporary account of the Revolution by the participating officers. 2

0 m e r S. Co|ar, (hazirlayan), Ataturk Ansiklopedisi, 396-397, 41 9 and 422-425.

I (Istanbul, 1973), pp. 297, 356, 378-379,

44

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

the recipients of the propaganda. In the specific case of the troops sent to Madedonia, it is implied that the enlisted men, generally cultivators, succumbed to the constitutional, liberal and patriotic slogans of the agitator officers. The final disturbing point is the stress upon events in the European provinces, to the exclusion of those in other regions. Resistance by the populaces of Istanbul and the Anatolian provinces would have transformed the Revolution. If either group had demonstrated actively on behalf of the ruler, the rebellious officers would have been either checked or compelled to engage in major bloodletting. The officers did carefully leave the Sultan on the throne and thereby avoided offending any legitimist sensibilities of the populace. But surely other factors could help explain the apathy of Istanbul residents and of hard-core supporters of the Sultan—the Turkish cultivators, a passivity which proved to be the deadi blow to die opponents of revolution. The rapidity of events and the secrecy in which they were shrouded certainly played some role in the authorities' inability to muster support. Still, this lack of popular backing for the government of the Sultan remains puzzling. A clue to the riddle, perhaps, lies in statements such as that of Ramsaur who, in passing, notes "economic crises" and the various popular and military risings. 3 Nevertheless, the majority of historians lavish their attention on the intellectuals and, in particular, the officers. They continue a process begun in August 1908, when theatre plays performed in Ottoman cities dramatically publicized die heroism and bravura of the Committee of Union and Progress. The general picture of the Young Turk Revolution that emerges from this group of authors is akin to the impression we would have of the French Revolution without die writings of Lefebvre, Rudd or Soboul. The second body of writings intimates a different perspective of die Revolution. As early as 1935, Turkish publicists, writers, journalists, social critics and political personalities (§anda, Siilker) began discussing an outbreak of strikes, which diey indicate erupted in Istanbul and other cities in August and September 1908. 4 Some also briefly noted strikes occurring before the •'Ramsaur, pp. 130-131. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel K. Shaw, History vf the Ottoman Empire and Modem Turkey: Vol. II, Reform, Revolution, and Republic. The Rise of Modem Turkey, 18081975 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 266, discuss the Revolution as a series of revolts that broke out "because of financial rather than ideological reasons." 4 T h e seminal study in this group is by Hiiseyin A. §anda, 1908'de ecnebi sermayesine kar$i ilk kalkinmalar (Istanbul, 1935), reprinted under the title, Tiirkiye'de 54 ytl onceki i f f : hareketleri (Istanbul, 1962). By the same author, see also: Bir yarim mustemleke olug tarihi (Istanbul, 1932). Other works in this category include: Behice Boran, Tiirkiye ve Sosyalizm Sorunlari (Istanbul, 1970); Kurthan Fi$eic, Tiirkiye de kapitalizmin gelifmesi ve i$fi simft (Ankara, 1969); Aclan Sayilgan, Tiirkiye'de sol hareketler (1871- 1972), second printing (Istanbul, 1972); and three works by Kemal Siilker: Tiirkiye'de Sendikacdtk; Tiirkiye'de igfi hareketleri, second printing; and Sendikaalar ve politika (Istanbul, 1955, 1973, 1974). Orhan Tuna, "Turk Sendikaciliginin ba;lica meseieleri ve son geli$meler," Istanbul Oniversitesi, iktisat Fakiiltesi Mecmuasi, 24 (Nisan-Eylul, 1965), pp. 3-28, is a scholarly study, but concerned with the

The Young Turk Revolution: Old and New Approaches

45

Revolution. Unfortunately, these references to the existence of labor unrest too often appear in polemical contexts, lack analytical depth, and are sparsely documented. Most of die authors are neither discussing the origins of the Revolution nor seeking to challenge, amend, or supplement the political interpretation of the majority group of scholars. Instead, their concern with the lower strata and not the elites of Ottoman society expressed itself in two ways: -

They gave vent to republican Turkish resentment over the allpervasive foreign economic presence in the Ottoman Empire; and

-

They sought to trace die origins of leftism/socialism/communism in post-Ottoman Turkey.

With the exception of the 1935 study of §anda, upon which most other works in this category draw heavily, the focus is on events in modern Turkey. Such writing was the exception until the early 1960s, but has become more frequent with the growth of the political left in Turkey. Even a cursory review of the post-Revolution 1908 strikes, to which this group of authors call attention, suggests an impressive range of work stoppages. Thousands of workers in transportation, communications, trade and manufacture—every sector of the urban economy—struck to force the adoption of various demands, almost always including wage increases. Nevertheless, no writer in this category explores the implications of this manifest economic discontent of Ottoman workers for a fuller understanding of the climate in which the Revolution took place. The third group of writers interested in the period of the Revolution consists of what we may call the "socialist/Marxist academics," notably Velikov and Tunfay. 5 Velikov focuses on events in Bulgaria and European Turkey, while Tunfay, who offers the most complete analysis, discusses Istanbul more fully. Both utilize a wide variety of materials and amply document their sources. Their development of the labor movement and not with the Revolution. Oya Sencer, TUrkiye'de ifçi smifi (Istanbul, 1969) is a well-documented study of labor unrest and organization during the 19th and 20th centuries into the period of the Turkish Republic. While offering richer detail than most works, this study is more chronological than analytic. It discusses labor formations, but does not relate organizing activities or worker unrest to the economic crisis of the prerevolutionary period. ^ Mete Tunçay, TUrkiye'de sol akimlar (1908-1925), second printing (Istanbul, 1967); Stefan Velikov, "Sur le mouvement ouvrier et socialiste en Turquie après la révolution jeune-turque en 1908," Études Balkaniques, 1964, Nr. 1, pp. 29-48; and by the same author; "Georges Dimitrov et quelques questions du mouvement ouvrier en Turquie," ibid, 1972, Nr. 1, pp. 115-122. Recent studies by Paul Dumont, "Une organisation socialiste ottomane: la fédération ouvrière de Salonique (1908-1912)," Études Balkaniques, 1975, Nr. 1, pp. 76-87; and "À propos de la 'classe ouvrière' ottomane à la veille de la révolution jeune-turque," unpublished paper graciously provided the present author and later published in Turcica, 1977, Nr. 1, pp. 229-251, add considerably to our knowledge of workers in the period of the Revolution.

46

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

tendency is to place the Revolution in a generally new methodological framework—new at least for Ottoman history. The Revolution is presented as that phase of the class struggle in which the working class joined with the middle class to overthrow the feudal (derebey) order. Afterwards the workers were suppressed by the new bourgeois state and finally, perhaps as early as 1910, began to develop class consciousness. This group of authors proceeds, however, from the Revolution as a given fact and describes only the various workers' movements and the evolution of some of these towards socialism. While adopting a Marxian framework, the members of this circle, in common with the writers in our second category, do not discuss the coming of the Revolution in connection with the widespread social and economic discontents. They draw attention to the non-elite Ottomans and stress a non-political interpretation. If we synthesize die three main schools of thought, the following picture of the Revolution comes into focus. Intellectuals and military officers steeped in Westernization became disenchanted with the existing régime because of its absolutism, illiberalism and inability to cure the politico-military ills of the empire. While Ottoman intellectuals argued in Europe, officers, taking matters into their own hands, organized themselves and effortlessly overthrew the absolutist structure. The Ottoman population, so far absent in this story, appears after the Revolution and avails itself of the newly found freedom—to strike. A comparison of (Le writings of the latter two groups with those of the first school brings into sharp relief the fact that most research has been done "from above"; i.e., concerns the political-intellectual origins of the Revolution, while tile social and economic dimensions "down below" largely have been ignored. Such focus probably derives not from firmly held beliefs in monocausality but, in part, from the natural tendency of historians to explore the more visible areas of die Ottoman spectrum. In addition, it may well reflect a long-standing tradition in Middle East historiography, which expresses itself in a certain distaste for economic themes, or those relating to conflict within the community. 6 It now seems appropriate to note that neither political factors alone nor the invocation of a theory of revolution that was bourgeois in nature provides satisfactory explanations of the event. Ottoman intellectuals and officers did not operate in vacuo, but in a special, identifiable economic context. My own recently presented research describes severe and worsening economic crises during 1907 and 1908.7 An exceptionally harsh winter in 19061907 drove up food and fuel prices and was followed by a prolonged drought throughout the spring, summer and fall of 1907. Unsubstantiated hopes for the

^Andrew C. Hess, "Consensus or Conflict; The Dilemma of Islamic Historians," The Historical Review, 81:788-799 (October, 1976).

American

'"The Economic Climate of the Young Turk 'Revolution' of 1908," paper presented to the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, at Ann Arbor. Michigan, November 1978.

The Young Turk Revolution: Old and New Approaches

47

1908 crops withered as drought resumed that spring and prices climbed still higher. Mounting anxieties in the provinces triggered peaceful processions, as well as violent bread riots, resulting in property destruction and loss of life. In many urban areas apprehensive workers petitioned for higher wages, struck and/or formed labor organizations. As the Revolution erupted, food prices in many Arab, European and Anatolian provinces were at record levels, higher than in over two decades. This narrative of a deteriorating economic climate, in the 18 months before the July 1908 constitutional restoration, adds a new economic and, in part, social dimension to the Young Turk Revolution. My concern at this point, and die subject of my ongoing research, is the significance of die economic crises to interpretations of the Revolution. Given this economic context, two new perspectives of the Revolution seem possible: -

The officers saw the crisis and unrest as a potential source of mass support for their own efforts and mutinied to advantage themselves of the opportunity; and

-

The crisis provoked spontaneous mass unrest of such proportions that a genuine social revolution had begun.

In this view the officers mutinied to check or control an already ongoing process. The first of these interpretations is more in the mainstream of Ottoman historiography. In tandem with our first school of thought, it continues to see the officers as leaders giving a focus to relatively inchoate popular discontent. But at this point we substantially modify our second and third schools of interpretation by relating post to pre-July 23, 1908 events. As crops failed and prices rose, uncertainty mounted, the discontented officers saw a unique chance for success and welded their own ambitions onto the popular grievances. On gaining success they, as adherents of the 19th-century school of European liberalism, turned their backs on their popular supporters when the differences between the erstwhile allies became evident. For example, although many of the August-September strikes obtained higher wages, the resulting salaries most often were less than demanded, thanks to interference by CUP representatives on behalf of employers. Frightened by the continuing labor unrest and perhaps feeling more securely entrenched, the government then forbade strikes altogether. Growing popular demands for political participation similarly were frustrated and disappointments were accentuated by the 1913 coup of the triumvirs. Popular hopes increasingly were articulated by left-wing movements that flourished underground in Turkey until their forcible repression in the 1920s. In this reformulation, therefore, die 1908 strikes are seen from an entirely different

48

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoinan Empire

perspective. They no longer simply are sudden expressions of political freedom, but rather appear as the logical consequence of a specific economic crisis. A second possible interpretation deriving from the new data on economic conditions is less traditional and deviates significantly, both from the accepted Ottoman historiographical tradition and the other two schools. Food shortages and rising prices loaded that extra bit of straw onto the backs of Ottoman cultivators and workers. Long exploited by factors such as the tax system and foreign intervention, the populace responded to the 1907-1908 crises with increasing violence. In this view the bread riots so far reported, as well as the conscript revolts around Izmir, merely are dull reflections of a vast upsurge in unrest. As thé summer of 1908 approached, uncertainty and popular violence increased. The officers, observers of these mass actions, feared a violent overthrow of the existing government and the consequent loss of their own position as members of the Ottoman elite. Hence, the officers intervened to prop up a government which they believed was too weak to avert the social revolution. The elites—the constitutional government and the CUP—-then grappled with die popular forces and for a time were forced to allow strikes and some wage increases. The details are still unclear, but the skilled workers in many cases appear to have been satisfied by such raises. The workers thus were split; the elites then deployed army and naval forces, asserted their own interests, and imposed anti-strike legislation on the working population. The unskilled elements among the workers continued to agitate, however, and their dissatisfaction helps explain events such as the April 1909 attempted counter-revolution. In this case the Sultan unsuccessfully sought to use the "Moslem fanatics and rude Kurds"—read disenchanted unskilled workers and day laborers—to regain power. The ulema abandoned Abdul Hamid and cooperated with the CUP to repress the counter-coup because the latter had proven its ability to defend elite interests. The elite then safely deposed the autocrat and, to maintain themselves in power, imposed stringent controls in the form of suspending the various parliamentary rights granted by the restoration of die Constitution. I hope the preceding comments will serve to stimulate further inquiries into the nature, causes and consequences of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. It seems clear that we need to probe more deeply beneath the surface of accounts that explain political behaviour solely in modernist and/or religious terms. To date, these reports have been taken too literally and have proven to be unsatisfactory explanations. New, more penetrating questions are required'if we are to perceive this late Ottoman revolution as the complex phenomenon it is, an event with a social, economic—as well as political—context and significance.

THE ECONOMIC CLIMATE OF THE YOUNG TURK REVOLUTION OF 1908*

This revolution did not come from below, from debased city mobs or ignorant peasantry, but from above, from all that is best in Turkey. 1 (1909). It is a sign of the times that, whereas it has been impossible in the past to bring the Turkish masses into line against the throne, because to them it represented an intangible Idol, semi-religious, semi-political, they have been awakened by their suffering into a nation of solidarity, the underlying element of which is a new-born spirit of criticism in regard to the Sultan-Caliph. 2 (September 1908) On a dit partout—et tout le monde l'a cru—que le blé faisait absolument défaut en Turquie et que la famine était à nos portes. 3 (January 1908)

A profound disequilibrium, arising from the industrialization of Europe and its quest for raw materials, foodstuffs and markets, confounded the world in the early 20th century. From a global perspective the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, as well as World War I, are European indicators of a more widespread inability among social and political systems of the underdeveloped states to absorb the onrush of economic and technological change. In China, Persia, the Ottoman Empire and Mexico, outbreaks of violence, varying in intensity and outcome, proclaimed the universality of die strains accompanying the deepening European economic penetration of the world.

*My thanks to Leo Grebler, Andreas Tietze and the colloquium group of the University of Houston History Department for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. I also am grateful to the staffs of the Deutsche Bank Archives (Frankfurt/M), Zentrales Staatsarchiv (Potsdam and Merseburg), and the Ba$ Bakanhk Arçivi (Istanbul) for their assistance and cooperation. A version of this paper was presented to the 1978 Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association. 1

E.F. Knight, The Awakening of Turkey. A history of the Turkish Revolution 1909), 114.

(Philadelphia,

A. Rustem Bey de Bilinski, "The Turkish Revolution," The Nineteenth Century and After, LXIV, September, 1908, 354. Revue commerciale du Levant, bulletin mensuel de la chambre de commerce française de Constantinople (hereafter Revue), Nr. 250, 1/1/1908, 192.

50

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire confronted these challenges earlier than most areas. Massive imports of machine-made European goods began in the late 1830s, undermining the Ottoman handicraft system and gradually weakening the guilds while the development of export-oriented agriculture inexorably transformed cultivator relations with the world outside the village. The pitch of European penetration intensified in the two decades before World War I. Railroads probed deep into the interior of Ottoman provinces and more tightly bound the expanding agrarian economy to world market needs. The spread of European corporative enterprises in the empire, for its part, brought along an unfamiliar work day and discipline. These cumulative innovations and intrusions corroded Ottoman values, traditional relationships and the assumptions upon which the government interacted with its subjects. Ottoman "institutions at all levels— social, economic, ideological, political—were attacked and destroyed or drastically modified."4 These secular tensions finally exploded in a phenomenon called the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. Whether or not this outbreak constituted a "real" revolution is uncertain: 5 we do not yet have enough information to make a conclusive assessment. Little is known about the Ottoman actors, even the famed intellectuals and officers. In the case of the Young Turks, the term revolution denotes developments which began in July of 1908. Military officers sought to realize dieir hopes for a strong state and successfully demanded the immediate introduction of parliamentary government, free speech, press and association—restoration of the 1876 Ottoman constitution. But when the unleashed internal forces threatened to move beyond those political achievements and upset existing social and economic relationships, the Young Turks reversed themselves by outlawing strikes, restricting labor organizations and, ultimately, curtailing political freedom. A key to understanding this interplay of government and subject and even the transformation of post-World War I Turkey involves an analysis of the social and economic conditions at the time of the initial sequence of events in 1908. Our knowledge is critically scanty. On the social side, we are dimly aware that a new professional bureaucracy, an often-rich but politically impotent merchant class, a group of cash crop cultivators, a small but growing European-style labor force and an artisan group in disarray had emerged, but detailed studies are lacking. Scholarship concerning the economic milieu is similarly sparse. Before the constellation of post-July 1908 events can be understood, these lacunae in our knowledge need to be filled. This essay is a preliminary effort to make the political occurrences and relationships of the

4

Andrew C. Hess, "Consensus or Conflict: The Dilemma of Islamic Historians," The Historical Review, Vol. 81 (October, 1976), 796.

American

% o r important insights into the place of the 1908 events in the typology of revolution, see §erif A. Mardin, "ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 2 (July, 1971), 197-211. More generally, sec for example, the still useful Chalmers Johnson, Revolution and the Social Structure (Stanford, 1964).

The Economic Climate of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908

51

period more intelligible—by examining the economic climate in which the reinstitution of the constitution took place in 1908. The present article differs from most studies of the Young Turk Revolution in both its geographic and topical foci. First, previous scholarship has stressed events in the European provinces, those from which the revolution erupted, but has ignored conditions both in the Istanbul capital and the financial and manpower heartland of the empire—the Anatolian provinces. This study focuses on Istanbul and Anatolia. Second, it investigates the economic conditions surrounding the outbreak of the revolution rather than the leadership and demonstrates that the early summer of 1908 was a period of severe economic crisis. The intent here is not to detract from the notable achievements of the revolutionary officers and intellectuals (or their historians). Nor is it to establish a cast-iron causal link between economic crisis and political mobilization. Such an effort would require a broader investigation, one carrying the story forward at least to the actual 'seizure' of power by the revolutionary officers in 1913 and backward to similar economic crises in 1898/1899 or even 1873-1875. Yet to sketch the economic climate within which crucial political events occurred clearly should open this period of Ottoman history to new inquiry, insightful questions, and possibly new relationships. *

* *

During the eighteen months preceding the July 1908 revolution, the Ottoman population confronted a series of domestic and international economic crises. 'Hie crises began with a severe winter in early 1907 which raised the price of practically every comestible and made "the existence of the laboring class very difficult." 6 By March, 1907, the Istanbul price of meat and staples such as legumes were double normal levels. Firewood was up 250 per cent over normal and charcoal had as much as tripled in price. Poverty, horrible poverty of a sinister countenance, has taken possession of this city and it reigns as mistress; it appears impossible for us to dislodge it.7 A prolonged spring drought then sharply reduced the grain harvest in many European, Anatolian, and apparently, Arab areas of the empire and according to some observers, threatened to bring famine. By August, pessimists were estimating Anatolian wheat and barley harvests 50 and 40 per cent below

6

Revue, Nr. 240, 3/31/1907, 530-532. Translations are the author's. 'ibid, and Nr. 238, 1/31/1907, 236: Omer Sami Cofar, hazirlayan, Aiaturk Ansiklopedisi, (Istanbul, 1973, hereafter Ataturk Am.), 386. for reports based on Sabah 3/29/1907.

I

52

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

normal. 8 The government responded and, between August and October 1907, forbade grain exports from six Anatolian regions and from all the European provinces. It also suspended the duty on foreign wheat imports to Istanbul while reducing the foreign flour duty by nearly half. 9 The brief but severe American financial crisis then added to the prevailing uncertainty by causing Istanbul and Anatolian bankers and merchants to tighten their credit. 10 Food provisioning prospects in early 1908 appeared promising and the year started with optimistic assessments of the next harvest. Gradually, however, area after area, in a pattern repeated throughout much of the empire, abandoned those rosy predictions and replaced them with harsher, if more accurate, prophecies. On the edge of Asia along the Dardanelles, continuing drought into late June produced numerous religious processions to seek the intervention of Providence. 11 Further afield in Anatolia, similar conditions prevailed. The town of Merzifon reported the crop of 1907 as 50 per cent below normal and the situation by April, 1908 was critical. Every bag of flour, every bite of bread, has cost the local consumer just about double the usual prices, and that makes a very hard condition for the poor. 12 The new governor of nearby Kastamonu province on the Black Sea reduced bread prices in a number of urban centers during April and May; rains in late June reportedly saved the population from disaster and local bread prices were expected to remain stable until the harvest. 13 The Aegean municipality of Izmir responded to its own crisis in late May, 1908 by making "small" or "notable" reductions in bread and meat prices, depending on which observer is to be believed. In mid-June, reports of discontent, stemming from the persistent drought, began emanating from the usually rich hinterland of the port city. 14 Inland, June and July rains lowered wheat prices at the railroad town of Eski§ehir; in the week of the revolution, however, their levels remained double those of tlie Q

Revue, Nr. 244, 8/31/1907, 152. te Journal de la chambre de commerce de Constantinople (hereafter JCCC). 10/12/1907, 473, placed ihe wheat decline at 20 per cent for Anatolia and 33 per cent for the European provinces. ^Hariciye Arjivi (Foreign Office Archives, Istanbul) Dosya 191 also records a 19 September 1908 prohibition on cereal exports from certain Arab areas. Also see Revue, Nr. 247 10/31/1907, 608; Nr. 246, 9/30/1907, 393-395; aod Nr. 253, 4/30/1908, 588. 10 F o r example. Revue, Nr. 248, 11/30/1907, 197-198; Nr. 250, 1/31/1908, 149; and Stamboul, 7/15/1908. ' 1 Levant Herald (hereafter LH), 6/24/1908, 2. For reports from Edirne and Selanik in the European provinces which reflect the increasing drought, suffering and pessimism, see LH, 1/13, 1; 2/17, 2-3; 4/27, 2; 5/21. 1; 6/2, 3; 6/19, 2 and 6/23/1908, 3. Stamboul, 6/2; 6/4; 6/26; 7/4; 7/9/1908. U LH, 4/1/1908, 1. n

LH,

14

5/7, 3; 5/25, 3; 5/26. 1; 5/30/1908, 3. Stamboul,

7/2/1908.

1.11, 5/25, 2 and Sabah, 5/24/1908, 1; LH, 5/26, 1 and 6/17/1908, 2. See Atatürk 4/w., I, e.g. 297, 396-397, for accounts of military and civilian unrest around Izmir dating back to 1902.

The Economic Climate of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908

53

previous year. Normal wheat exporters such as this area and the Adapazar region further up the line were importing wheat for their own needs. 15 Harvest reports from Konya, also on the railroad, generally had been good. But in late June, despite recent and abundant rains, residents were said to "fear the drought and also famine," and the governor prohibited grain exports.16 Elsewhere, in the central Anatolian town of Sivas, wheat prices in January, 1908, stood at 257 piasters/kile of 165 okkes, the highest level in thirty-five years. After dropping by twelve per cent in late February, they rebounded to new heights in the first week of June while inhabitants formed processions to mosques and churches and prayed for rain. A week later, rains did come but prices still crept upwards, to a level 24 per cent higher than in January. 17 On the morning of June 23, women from neighboring villages came into the town, protested die price and quality of flour and demanded bread. By noon, some 500 townspeople joined the women at the government house, stoned the building and smashed its windows. The crowd then ransacked the grain warehouses and confronted a military unit unwilling to open fire. Towards evening some 60 persons with wheat in their homes were arrested and the riot apparently subsided.18 At Kayseri, the 1907 crop had been about one-third below normal. Flour which had sold for 3-4 piasters/iwfman of 17 lbs. av. in mid-1907 had tripled in price by November; then, with better weather in December it declined, to 7-8 piasters. Although good rains fell in mid-May 1908, the drought resumed and on June 12, the inhabitants were "suffering enormously... from the extraordinarily high price of flour." 19 While 12,000 persons gathered to pray for rain, the local government intervened and sold subsidized flour, but at the level of 13 piasters. On June 15, a correspondent reported on affairs in the town. "Seldom have 1 seen such a constant watching of the sky, such a deep longing for the 'latter' rain." By then, flour prices were about quadruple those of the previous year. 20 Near the east-central Anatolian town of Erzurum, authorities were aiding some villagers with exemptions from the usual duties on imported grain. 21 There, the people had been in varying stages of unrest since 1906. A taxpayers' revolt in 1906-1907 had resulted in the destruction of the government building, 15

Stamboul,

l6

LH

5/21; 6/16; 7/6; 7/10; 7/23/1908.

6/25/1908, 2-3 and Stamboul,

5/29/1908.

17

LH, 1/22, 2-3; 2/5, 2; 3/5, 2; 6/1. 3; 6/17, 3; and 6/24/1908, 2; piaster-monetary unit, nominally one-hundredth of a Turkish pound; kite—unit of measure; okke—unit of weight, 2.8 lbs. av.

18 la

Alaturk

l9

SlambouI,

20

Ans., I, 404-405 after reports of the French consul. 6/23/1908. Also, LII, 1/24, 1; 5/20, 3; 6/27/1908.

L H , 6/27/1908; also sources cited in n. 19 above. 21 Sabah, 2/20/1908, 1 and LH, 2/20/1908, 2. Not far away, at Harput, "Prices of almost all articles of food are double the prices of ordinary years." LH. 6/25/1908, 1.

54

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

the killing of several officials, the wounding of the governor, and the refusal of some officers to suppress the rising. Erzurum again exploded in September, 1907 when bread prices "suddenly" doubled. A crowd stormed the properties of flour merchants, lynched one and badly wounded two others. Again some military personnel refused to act. The central government took the initiative in October, imprisoning or executing rebel ringleaders while exiling disobedient officers. 22 The sources then fall silent on events in Erzurum but, from September 1907 until the following May, bread prices remained more than double their earlier, normal, levels.23 A distinct pattern emerges from this survey of events in the Anatolian provinces. Wheat/flour/bread prices shot up after mid-1907, then slipped very modestly at the end of the year in expectation of the future harvest. Prices, however, never fell from the late 1907 plateaus and then rose to new heights as widespread drought again became evident. Many areas, with the increasing certainty of a second consecutive crop failure, possessed only the thinnest of margins against die growing possibility of famine. For the regime, the continuing deterioration mocked its subsidy programs and made the policy of arrest and exile increasingly hazardous. Conditions in the imperial and favored city of Istanbul reflected those in the provinces and affected all classes of the population. As 1908 began most commodity prices still were well above normal. Fruit and vegetable prices remained 25 per cent, firewood 58 per cent and charcoal 250 per cent above the levels prevailing at the beginning of the 1906-1907 winter crisis. 24 In addition, the city suffered a meat shortage during the winter of 1907-1908 and the spring of 1908. In January, 1908, the price of mutton, consumed mainly by the middle and upper classes, was at least 50 per cent above normal. By March, the price of meat had reached "unbelievable figures." 25 The shortage was attributed to a variety of factors including the export of animals, the increasing conversion of pasture to cropland, high fodder prices, and a combination of heavy snows, prolonged drought and epizoots in both European Turkey and Anatolia.26 22

Atatürk Ans., I, 358-360, 3X0-383 and Mehmet Nusret. Tarilife 71 which f o r m s the source of the encyclopedia account.

i Enurum

(Istanbul, 1328), 57-

2 3

i W 4/10, 3; 4/22, 2; 5/7/1908 and Atatürk Ans., 1, 382. Also flour prices cited in the above newspapers as well as in LH, 5/28, 3 and 6/24/1908, 3. For bread riots in the A r a b provincial centers of Aleppo and Beirut in November, 1907, see Atatiirk Ans., I, 384, after reports of the French consuls. 2< *United States, Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Manufactures, Monthly Consular and Trade Reports (hereafter U.S. Monthly Reports), January 1908, 202-203 and Revue Nr. 240, 3/31/1907, 530-352. jtr lJ LH 3/18/1908, 2; Revue cited in n. 24 above. For meat prices during March-June see: Sabah, 3/7, 2; 3/27, 1; 4/5. 1; 4/6, 1; 4/17. 2: and 6/14/1908, 2; and LH, 3/18, 2; 3/27, 2; 4/8, 1; and 4 / 2 7 / 1 9 0 8 , 1. 26 Sabah, 2/12, 2; 3/18, 2; 3/27/1908, 1-2 and LH, 4/8/1908. 2. Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam. Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter ZStA.AA), Nr. 6722, Bl. 70. See Sabah, 2/27, 1-2 ; 2/28. 2 ; 3/7, 2 ; 3/12, 1; 3/15, 2 ; 3/18 ; and '/26/1908, 1 for government counter measures.

The Economic Climate of the Young Turk Revolution of ¡908

55

The municipal administration, in January, began setting meat prices on a weekly basis as the imperial government ordered the provinces to ship their herds to the capital. 27 Through March and April 1908, Istanbul newspapers lavished extensive coverage on the shipment of animals to the city, for example precisely enumerating the arriving animals. By mid-April, thanks in part to the receipt of sheep from Syria, the crisis apparently had passed. 28 Reports now focused on the disappearance of epizoot from the various areas. 29 Still, in early May, one newspaper could report that the "rise in meat prices constitutes the general preoccupation as does that of all odier objects of alimentation."30 While confronting and apparently resolving the meat shortage, Istanbul faced another, most serious, crisis of food supply. The upward spiral in the price of wheat, flour and bread severely threatened the well-being of the broad Ottoman masses for whom bread was the major item of consumption: the average Ottoman ate an impressive 2.2-3.0 lbs. av. daily. 31 During the several decades preceding the crisis being related here, Istanbul wheat prices had fluctuated according to a certain pattern. Usually, average monthly prices rose or fell moderately, within a range of ± 10 per cent, with an increase during one month generally being offset by subsequent seasonal price declines. Annual price fluctuations commonly were of modest proportions. In 1907-1908, however, the pattern was broken; the divergence began in the late spring of 1907. As evidence of a poor crop accumulated, the average April wheat price of 38.31 paras/okke jumped to 43.00 in June. Nervousness in the market mounted and when prices reached 50.50 in September, trading temporarily ceased. At this juncture, the government intervened with its measures to assure bread supplies. When trading resumed, however, prices continued their upward course and, in die final three months of the year, averaged 41 per ccnt above the April price (with a peak of 55.40 paras/okke in November). During the year, the average quarterly wheat price had advanced steadily from 36.77 to 40.74 in the second quarter, rising to 46.06 and, in the final quarter, to 54.19 paras/okke.12

21

28

LH, 1/28, 3; 2/18, 2; and 3/28/1908, 1-2. Sabah, 3/11, 2; 3/26, 1; 4/5, 1; and 4/8/1908, 1.

Several meat purveyors to the army contracted for the shipment of 30,000 sheep from Syria to the capital, a measure winning them the gratitude of the press, later provisioning contracts and, probably, considerable profits. See, for example, Sabah, 3/25, 1; 4/2, 1-2; 4/6, 1; 4/17, 2; and 6/14/1908, 2; LH, 3/26, 1; 3/27, 2; and 4/2/1908, 1. 29 Sabah, 6/14, 2; 6/17, 2; 6/22, 1; 6/24, 2; 6/29, 1; and 7/20/1908, 1-2. Also IJI, 4/23, 2; 4/24, 2; 5/12, 2; and 6/3/1908, 2. For contrary reports or indications of epizoot revival, see LH, 6/29/1908, 3; Stamboul, 7/7/1908, and AtatUrk Ans., I, 404. 30 LH, 5/8/1908 2. For "buffalo" meat sales in Izmir, see LH, 3/27/1908, 1. 3 ' For bread consumption patterns see, for example, Revue, Nr. 256, 7/31/1908, 156; ZStA,AA, Nr. 53736, Bl. 39 and U.S. Monthly Reports, January 1909, 71.

31

Ji

P r i c e s derived from semi-weekly market reports in JCCC, 1907, and calculated in constant value monetary and weight units. Forty paras equal one piaster. Prices are for Ankara Nr. 1 wheat; other grades follow similar price trends. A table stating average annual prices for standard grade wheat in Istanbul, 1876-1908, is available from the author. Generally, prices fell during the late

56

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

The fixed price of bread, determined, after negotiations between the municipality and the bakers' guild, rose accordingly. After the first wheat price increase, the "years old'' fixed retail price of 40 paras per loaf of standard weight bread was moved up to 45 in June 1907. In September it was allowed to increase again, to 50 paras. By the end of 1907, bread and wheat prices respectively had increased 25 and 45 per cent in six months. In early 1908, Istanbul newspapers began publishing detailed reports on crop prospects in the provinces. If the intent was to reassure readers, the scheme must have backfired: generally, the news was bad. The international market had stabilized sufficiently in Istanbul, however, so that the year began with a fractional slippage in wheat prices. In its eagerness to regain lost revenues, the government reacted perhaps too quickly and, in February, repealed the export prohibitions as well as the reductions in wheat and flour import duties. Negotiations dien lowered die fixed price of bread to 45 paras per loaf. 34 But as another poor season unfolded, Istanbul wheat prices, from the year's low of 49.25 paras/okke in late February, crept fractionally upwards through March, April, May, June, and July. During the first six months of 1908, they were 35 per cent higher than the year before. In the month of the revolution, wheat prices reached 55.00 paras/okke, their peak for the year. The bread price moved correspondingly and on May 7, rose to 50 paras, a level maintained until after the revolution.35 Bread prices increased much more than the quoted statistics indicate. In this era of rising prices, Istanbul bakers felt caught in die squeeze between government efforts to keep bread prices at a minimum and their own desire to maintain certain profit margins. In response, some bakers produced and sold shortweight bread. In the first five months of 1908, the municipality confiscated over 100,000 loaves which it considered underweight. On the average, the bread weighed 30 per cent less than die officially-set standard, an additional cost borne 19th century price depression and gradually rose after 1896. The indexed table shows that if wheat cost 100 in 1906, it had risen to 123 in 1907 and 145 in 1908. 33 / C C C , 7/20/1895, 339; Ataturk Am., I. 386-387. In referring to loaf weights, French language papers in Istanbul usually stated kilogram while Ottoman language sources alternatively employed kilogram and okke (of 1.28 kgs.). Ikdam, 8/27/1908, 2 and Revue, Nr. 257, 8/31/1908, 322, make clear that the weight standard is the kilogram and not the okke. Pressure on bread prices already was evident in 1906; see, e.g., Revue, Nr. 227, 2/28/1906, 247249. 34

Sabah, 2/8, 1; 2/16, 2; 2/25, 1; 2/26, I; 2/27, 1; and 2/28/1908, 1. LH, 2/26, 1; 2121, V, and 2/28/1908, 1. Hariciye Ar$ivi, Dosya 191, 2/2/1908; Revue, Nr. 251, 2/29/1908, 255 and Bundesarchiv (Koblenz) R2/1717, 2/26/1908. K

Bread prices in Ba$ Bak.mlik Ar$ivi (Prime Ministry Archives, Istanbul, hereafter BBA), Bab-i Ali Evrak Odasi (hereafter IIEO) 247951; LH, 5/3, 1-2; 5/5, 2; 5/6, 1-2; and 5/7/1908, 1-2. Stamboul, 5/4/1908, 2; Sabuh, 5/4, 1 and 5/7/1908, 1. Wheat prices for 1908 derived from JCCC weekly market reports according to procedures sketched in n. 32. The bread price rose immediately after the revolution, to 55 paras/loaf. The implications of changing food prices on relations between the Ottoman masses and the Young Turk regime ire being studied by the author.

The Economic Climate of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908

57

by the Ottoman consumer.36 The quality of the bread also was declining. Normally, when indigenous sources dwindled, wheat and flour imports helped to maintain low bread prices. In 1907, however, world wheat production slumped as many other countries suffered varying degrees of crop failure. The great American granary reported a 15 per cent shortfall in 1907 while in early 1908 a drought threatened its spring crop.37 More immediately important to the Ottomans was production in Bulgaria and Romania, countries which normally were significant suppliers both in the international and Istanbul markets. In 1907, Romanian output was down 63 per cent while Bulgarian production fell 40 per cent. 38 Istanbul millers and bakers therefore turned elsewhere and, in 1908 procured a record 73 per cent of the flour consumed in Istanbul from France (Marseilles) and Italy. These two sources provided a cheaper but lower quality flour than the Danubian, Russian or Ottoman areas.39 The procurement of this less-expensive flour, although its price had risen 50 per cent in two years, made it easier to keep bread prices within the state-imposed limits.40 But the widespread use of poorergrade flours, coupled with the practice of short weights, did place the Ottoman consumer at a great disadvantage. Istanbul residents, in the several months before the revolution, were eating lower-quality bread, of lesser weight, and paying more for their loaves than at any time in the past twenty-five years.41 "Nos estomacs et nos bourses protestent."42 All the while, they received continuing if unfounded assurances that the situation was not worsening.43

36

L H , 1/28, 1; 2/19, 1; 3/5, 1-2; 3/19, 4; 4/21, I; 5/18/1908, 1; 6/11/1908, 2; Stamboul, 7/1/1908; Ataturk Ans., I, 386. Revue, Nr. 227, 2/28/1906, 256 and Nr. 256, 7/31/1908, 156157. Osman Nuri, $eltri Eminleri (Istanbul, 1927), 198-199, for stronger municipality measures to prevent weight fraud beginning c. early 1906. 37

Historical Abstracts of the United States, 511; JCCC, 10/12/1907, 473, indicate an 11 per cent decline in global wheat production between 1906 and 1907. 38 United States, Department of Agriculture, Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture (Washington, 1909) and ibid., 1910, 606-607 and 444-445 respectively also note that world-wide wheat production in 1907 and 1908 was down about 8 per cent compared with the preceding two years. JCCC, 5/2/1908, 145, places the Romanian decline, compared with average 1902-1906 levels, at 50 per cent. 39 •"During the period 1889-1906, Marseilles and Italy typically provided 2-12 per cent of the flour consumed in Istanbul—1899 with 28 per cent and 1900 with 52 per cent are the only exceptions. In 1907, the two sources shipped 45 per cent. Market summaries in LH, 1889-1890, and JCCC, 1892-1908. 40 Market reports in JCCC, 1906-1908. The procedures explained in n. 32 were employed to obtain flour prices. 4

' T h i s assertion is based partially on the record use of Marseilles and Italian flour and contemporary reports, e.g., Revue, Nr. 256, 7/31/1908, 159. Also, the table cited in n. 32 demonstrates that comparably high wheat prices had not prevailed in Istanbul since 1880-1882. For the direct linkage between wheat, flour, and bread prices see Ikdam, 8/17/1908, 2. 42 Revue, Nr. 256, 7/31/1908, 159. 43 JCCC, the organ of the merchant community, optimistically manipulated statistics throughout the wheat crisis. Finally, in the 12/26/1908 issue, 405, it admitted that 1908 had been a "most difficult" year. The other newspapers, in their news sections, also often predicated a promising harvest but, in the same issues, letters from provincial correspondents indicated the reverse situation.

58

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

The uncertainty and high prices in the first half of 1908 were justified fully. The 1908 harvest was perhaps the worst since the killing famines of the mid-1870s: the year ended with widespread crop failures and near-famine conditions in many areas. 44 Several indicators such as the volume of rail and sea shipments of grain during 1907 and 1908 attest to the severity of the shortages. The Anatolian Railway after its completion in 1895 had become the major Istanbul wheat (but not flour) supplier, annually shipping up to 94 per cent of that grain received in the capital. Annual average shipments of cereals rose from 238,000 tons during its first years of full operations, 1896-1901, to 310,000 tons between 1902 and 1906. With the 1907 crop failure, merchants in the interior drew on existing stocks and shipped 240,000 tons, down nearly onefourth. By the spring of 1908, stocks were depleted and grain shipments for the year plummeted, to 93,000 tons. 45 Declines are similarly if less clearly evident in cereal exports from die coastal centers of Mersin, Izmir and Samsun. During the period 1876-1906, grain shipments from these cities had risen considerably (at least 50 per cent). Annual average grain exports from the southeastern port of Mersin rose dramatically between 1876-1880 and 1891-1895, slipped during the 1898-1899 turnaround occasioned by crop failures and war but again increased, to perhaps twice the levels of the 1870s and 1880s, in the 1902-1906 period. During these five years, the annual value of Mersin cereal exports averaged 293,000 British pounds but in 1907, even with inflated prices, declined to 193,000 pounds. Cereal shipments from Izmir had risen steadily and, in 1906, were at least double those of three decades before. Between 1902 and 1906, they annually averaged 571,000 British pounds but in 1907 and 1908, fell to 328,000 pounds (again with higher prices). At the Black Sea port of Samsun, the value of cereal exports in the late 1880s and early 1890s was approximately twice that of the preceding ten year period but then slipped badly between 1902 and 1906, to about the level of the early 1880s. In 1908, exports fell further, to 23,000 British pounds, about one-third the

44 T h e 1907-1908 crisis derived its magnitude not only from internal Ottoman conditions but from the concomitant crop failures or shortfalls abroad. To compare conditions in 1907-1908 with those of earlier periods, see: Sociele du chemin de fer ottoman d'Anatolie Bericht des Verwaltungsrathes ttber das... Betriebsjahr (1. Januar bis 31. December...) for the years 1889-1908 (hereafter Annual Reporl(s) ; Great Britain, Accounts and Papers, Parliamentary Papers (hereafter A&P), reports on the trade and commerce o f Smyrna/Izmir, Samsun, Trabzon and Adana/Mersin, 1876-1908.

•^Istanbul bread continued lo derive mainly from flour milled abroad; see my article, Revolution; the Impact of the Anatolian Railway on Turkish Transportation Provisioning of Istanbul. 1890-1908," Business History Review, Summer, 1977, Annual Reports, 1889-190«. Cereal shipments fell below those of 1908 only once, after crop failures in 1898 and 1899 and when the railroad still was relatively new.

"Limited and the 139-160. in 1899,

The Economic Climate of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908

59

annual average level of the preceding five years and one-ninth that of Samsun's best export half-decade. 46 Loan statistics of the Agricultural Bank, a government agency providing low-interest credit to cultivators, also reveal the depression in Ottoman agriculture during 1907-1908. While secured bank loans annually averaged 679,000 Turkish pounds between 1902 and 1906, their value rose to 1,097,000 pounds in 1907 and to 1,143,000 pounds in 1908. Perhaps a better indicator of the crisis are bank loans to those unable to furnish real estate as collateral, a group usually ignored by the bank and to which it annually lent, between 1902 and 1906, only 40,000 Turkish pounds. In 1907 and 1908, the annual value of such unsecured loans rose more than six fold. 47

*

* *

The available concrete evidence of unrest triggered by these grave and deteriorating economic conditions has been summarized above. Although this documentation is relatively sparse, a reflection, perhaps, of the lack of research, contemporary reporting and/or actual passivity, it does suggest widespread provincial discontent and distress. In Istanbul, signs of unrest also are visible among the workers, a group which had been in a fairly favorable position. In a possible response to the worsening economic conditions, Ottoman railroad workers established a union on October 30, 1907. 48 The next day, the Oriental Railway Company raised its workers daily wages and "accepted" salary increases for its officials while, at the end of the year, the Anatolian Railway Company created a pension fund for its employees. Istanbul dock workers agitated in July 1907 and mid-June 1908 a n d , on the earlier date, some apparently lost their jobs

46 A & P reports on the trade and commerce of Smyrna/Izmir, Samsun, and Adana/Mersin and Revue, Nr. 253, 4/30/1908, 598. The 1907 Mersin exports, originally reported at 157,000 pounds, were revised upwards to 193,000 pounds. The available sources suffer from several major deficiencies. First, exports often are given under the general rubric "cereals," which include wheat, barley, maize, and oats. Second, the export statistics most often are stated in unit«; of monetary value and not weight or measure. Third, we have annual price data for Istanbul but not the three ports. Actual production figures do exist for the region as well ai some provinces but not in a sufficiently continous series. Furthermore the sources employ terms—Anatolia, Asia Minor and Asiatic Turkey—which are not necessarily interchangeable. And finally, the fundamental accuracy of both region-wide and provincial figures is questionable.

Yusuf Saim Atasagun, Tiirkiye Cumliuriyeti Tiraat Bankasi, 1888-1939 (Istanbul, 1939), tables on 261 and 345. For loan assistance to cultivators at the end of 1908, see BBA BEO 258442, 259441, and 259832, and ZStA,AA, Nr. 15052, Bl. 55. Policy changes introduced by the Young Turk government account for some of the increases. 48 Stefan Velikov, "Sur le mouvement ouvrier et socialiste en Turquie après la révolution jeuneturque en 1908," Éludes Balkaniques, 1964, Nr. 1, 41. Growing consciousness among the workers, noted by Velikov and others, surely played a role as well.

60

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

after seeking pay increases.49 During the first half of 1908, office workers in the capital sought to organize but, fearing the "great risks," gave up the efforts until after the revolution. 50 Public health employees there received 10-15 per cent raises in late February 1908, an action one newspaper lauded as exemplary if, unfortunately, unique in the city. 51 Another indication of discontent is an imperial decree of early June which ordered the immediate payment of a month's salary to state employees and officials. 52 In the absence of more complete data on the wages of Ottoman urban workers, average family size, frequency of supplemental income within a family and/or second jobs for household heads, the impact of food price increases can only be approximated. Before the 1907-1908 downturn, the average common laborer, if unmarried and supporting only himself, used 10-15 per cent of his income for his own daily bread needs. Railroad workers at the lower end of their occupation's pay scale, as well as some printing house workers, devoted 14-19 per cent of their wages for bread. Skilled laborers such as bricklayers and carpenters spent only 5-6 per cent. 53 If we then assume that the above workers had a family with wife and two children and provided the whole family income, we can obtain a notion of what the bread price increases might have meant to some families. The common laborer in such a situation initially would have devoted 40-60 per cent of his income to bread needs and, other things equal, 5075 per cent by July 1908. Similarly, railroad workers and printing house employees would have been paying 56-76 per cent of their wages for bread before the crisis and an implausible 72-100 per cent thereafter. For skilled laborers, bread now would have drained about 25-30 per cent of wages. Put more simply, all individuals, regardless of income and marital status, were paying 25 per cent more for their bread in July 1908 than 13 months earlier and few enjoyed even partially compensating wage increases. Considering odier necessities such as rent and other minimum food and clothing needs, some of these statistical calculations strain credibility. There is no indication in the materials available for research on this essay how the spending pattern of workers as a group changed in response to the extraordinary and sometimes absurd proportion of income needed just for bread. There were ^ Atatürk Ans., I, 387, quoting the newspaper Moniteur 1907, g. BBA BEO 231817, 250105, and 250219.

Oriental, 11/12/1907. AnnuaI

Report,

S0

Stamboui, 8/22/1908; ibid., 8/20/1908 indicates a March 1908 formation of an international association of commercial employees in Istanbul. 51

LH, 2/25, 2; 2/27/1908, 1; and Sabal,. 2/25, 1; 2/28/1908, 2.

52

LH, 6/10/1908, 2. The percentages are for Istanbul workers' wages related to Istanbul Reports, clipping from an unspecified 1908 magazine in collection of the after the reports. ZStA.AA (Merseburg), Rep. 93, Abt. E, Nr. 396, Bl. dessous de l'administration des chemins des fer ottomans d'Anatolie et 1911), 131, Stamboul, 8/12/1908. Tevfik Çavdar, Milli Mucadelenin (Istanbul, 1974), 129-130.

bread prices. Annual Deutsche Bank, bound 107r; A. Gabriel, Les de Bagdad (Istanbul ekonomik käkenleri

The Economic Climate of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908

61

presumably some consumption substitutions. Some families had two or three breadwinners while the statistical illustrations assumed only one. Other workers may have borrowed from relatives, from moneylenders, or obtained retail store credit. And some simply may have eaten less. The wage hikes noted above were the exception; more generally, "neither profits nor salaries have followed the upward tendency [in prices]..." 54 Most wages remained fixed during the inflationary period, a reversal of what one writer has described as a rise in real wages during most of the half century before the revolution. 55 Ottoman workers were less well off in July 1908 than they had been for several decades and were confronting a sharp, sudden decline in their level of living. 56 One theorist suggests that a long period of relative prosperity followed by a "short period of sharp reversal" creates a "gap between expectations and gratifications which quickly widens and becomes intolerable." 57 At this juncture, violent action ensues. Whether the relative prosperity of decades and its sudden turnabout in the 1907-1908 crisis predisposed the Ottoman urban workers to violence or change cannot be determined here but the question is posed as a spur to further research. For the rural masses, the shortfalls of 1907-1908 hardly represented a unique experience: deprivation, impoverishment and the cycle of abundance followed by want were familiar phenomena. Also, crop failures and price rises of seemingly comparable magnitudes had occurred within living memory, most recently, in 1898-1899, without sparking revolution. Therefore, the economic setbacks in 1907-1908 cannot be viewed as die sole motive force of the revolution. What seems new in July 1908 is that an economic crisis unfolded in the presence of an organized, widespread revolutionary cadre. For the first time in decades, there was a favorable juncture, of economic and political conditions.

54

U . S . Monthly Reports, January 1908, 203.

55

Charles Issawi issued a preliminary report on "Wages in Turkey, 1850-1914," to the "First International Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey, 1071-1920" held at Hacettepe University, Ankara, July 11-13, 1977. He noted that at the turn of the century, real wages for common laborers were almost "twice as high as those of 1850" and those for "skilled laborers perhaps one and a half times as high." Fragmentary information, however, suggests little increase in real wages after the end of the 1873-1896 price depression. Compare, for example, the 1908 wages of common laborers in Izmir noted by Issawi with those of "day laborers" in 1896 cited in United States, Department of State. Bureau of Statistics, Special Consular Reports. "Money and Prices in Foreign Countries," report by Consul Madden of Smyrna/Izmir. 8/26/1896, 209. 56 Revue, Nr. 257. 8/31/1908, 233-236, discussed the outbreak of strikes after the revolution and said that to understand the workers' position several factors, including the rising cost of living and unjustifiably high prices which made it impossible to live on some of their former salaries, had to be considered. 57 James C. Davies, "The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfactions as a Cause of Some Great Revolutions and a Contained Rebellion," Hugh D. Graham and Ted R. Gurr, eds., Violence in America, revised edition (New York, 1970), 690-730.

62

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

In sum, this preliminary investigation has indicated a second side to the prerevolution days of 1908: a rapidly deteriorating economic environment, restiveness among workers, a suffering and sometimes riotous rural population, and an abiding pessimism for the future harvest. The existence of direct contacts between elements of these various urban and rural groups and the Young Turk officers is uncertain. Although the officers clearly acted in a socio-economic climate favorable to success, it remains a matter of conjecture as to whether or not the revolution would have occurred in the absence! of such a climate. To summarize the case: international financial crisis, extreme cold, drought, crop failure (both domestic and international) and epizoot created unstable economic conditions and pushed food prices to unprecedented heights on the eve of the revolution. Prospects in July 1908, before the new harvest and when stocks were low, seemed grim, with little hope for improvement. Frustrated urban workers faced a declining standard of living. There was little reason for either the urban or rural populace to aid a regime apparently unable to alter conditions. The economic conditions favoring the Young Turks in July 1908 also created the backdrop for the subsequent evolution of government-subject relations. The acquiescence of the populace to the July events carried with it implicit exectations of economic benefits which were translated into action during the following weeks when new workers' organizations and strikes proliferated. Government repression stifled the expectations and, nine months later, the disappointed population supported the unsuccessful counter-revolution of the Sultan. The present study, by establishing the economic setting of the 1908 revolution, suggests that the flow of events in Young Turk and early republican Turkey can be made more sensible if the tie between economic conditions, popular expectations, and government action is explored further.

LIMITED REVOLUTION: THE IMPACT OF THE ANATOLIAN RAILWAY ON TURKISH TRANSPORTATION AND THE PROVISIONING OF ISTANBUL 1890-1908*

By the late nineteenth century, development of the North American railroad system had revolutionized the logistics of food supply in the western world, and created great fortunes for those who had sponsored this innovation. When the government of the Ottoman Empire and a syndicate led by the Deutsche Bank signed an agreement in 1888 calling for construction of the Anatolian Railway, therefore, European investors looked forward to great profits. To provide for what would become the most ambitious German financial undertaking in the Empire, the concessionaires floated securities ultimately totalling 223 million francs, consisting of 57 million in stocks and 166 million in 5 per cent bearer bonds. The syndicate acquired a short line already built between Haydarpaça (just across the Bosporus from Istanbul) and Izmit (see map), won the right to extend it to Ankara, and formed the Anatolian Railway Company (Société du chemin de fer ottoman d'Anatolie). Rapid completion of the Ankara section inspired the Ottoman government to grant the company the right to build a second, connecting line to the central plateau town of Konya. Opening of the two sections stirred hopes that Turkey was on the brink of a transportation and provisioning revolution. Contemporaries expected that old trade routes and dependence on animal transport in the remote interior would vanish. By locating the railroad terminus at Haydarpa§a, within several thousand meters of the Ottoman capital, the promoters expected to increase the flow of

I gratefully acknowledge grants from the Foreign Area Fellowship Program (1970-1971), the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Defence Research Council (1975); and the University of Houston (1976), in support of the research and writing of this article. For their cooperation and assistance, I am grateful to the staffs of the Deutsche Bank archives (Frankfurt/M), Zentrales Staatsarchiv (Potsdam) and (he Ba^bakanhk Arjivi (Istanbul). Also, my sincere thanks to Ms. Marta Diaz, University of Houston, for her generous assistance in producing the map.

64

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Anatolian produce to Istanbul. The line, passing first through the relatively densely-populated Izmit-Adapazar coastal regions, seemed certain to give the capital a better supply of fruits and vegetables; but more important, and the object of the brightest hopes, was the ascent of the tracks onto the central plateau, a vast but under-cultivated cereal growing area punctuated with few urban centers. Here, a sparse population (about eleven persons per square kilometer) practiced a subsistence form of agriculture based on such primitive techniques as wooden plows, hand sowing and reaping. A railroad, it was believed, would transform the plateau region into the new granary of the imperial seat and the residents of Istanbul, accustomed to receiving their wheat and flour supplies from Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, and European Turkey, soon would be consuming loaves made from Anatolian grains. In short, a new future for Ottoman development was foreseen with the construction of a modern transportation system. 1 Railroads have played a variety of roles in the economic development oi nations. Throughout Europe and North America, they have been important components of broader economic, social, and cultural changes; in the New World they have been a chief means of fostering development; but in other places they have proved to be little more than alien transplants of limited purpose, bearing little relationship to the overall environment. American railroads may not have been an "indispensable" transport innovation, but they did accompany and significantly contribute to industrial and agricultural growth. In Russia, by contrast, the state directed railroad building, not only to promote agricultural development but also to strengthen defense perimeters and stimulate industrialization; still, as in the United States, Russian lines helped to open and settle frontier regions. In some areas of tropical Africa and South America, European-financed lines penetrated short distances into the interior to bring out the sought-after export commodity but had little total impact upon the host country. The Ottoman Empire's experience with railroads reflects that state's less developed but nevertheless politically independent status, placing it somewhere between industrial West and exploited European imperial possessions. The Anatolian Railway corresponded more closely to the prevailing sociocultural milieu than, for example, lines in Africa or Egypt, but it demonstrated little of the relationship between rail-building and general economic development that characterizes the United States. The Ottoman regime, ruling one of the more powerful non-Westem states of the nineteenth century, was able, as was its

Studies of the Anatolian Railway usually have been subsumed under those of its extension, the Bagdad Railway, have a European perspective, and focus on political-diplomatic events. See, for example, Edward Mead Earle, Turkey, the Great Powers and the Bagdad Railway (New York:, 1923); John B. Wolf. The Diplomatic History of the Bagdad Railway (Columbia, Missouri, 1936). For a recent, general survey based on such earlier studies, see Yakub N. Karlcar, Railway Development in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1914 (New York, 1972). Financing of the line is treated in, for example, Charles Morawitz, Les Finances de la Turquie (Paris, 1902), 586-594 and the sources cited in n. 4.

Railways

in

Anatolia,

c. 1 9 0 3

T h e H a y d a r p a s a Station, W e s t e r n T e r m i n u s of the Anatolian Railway.

The Impact of the Anatolian Railway

65

Russian counterpart, to control the location of its railroad. But, caught in the dilemma of underdevelopment, the Ottoman government envisioned the line as an instrument for overcoming politico-military, not economic backwardness. The Anatolian Railway would facilitate troop mobilization and central control; economic growth, however desirable, remained a secondary consideration in the eyes of state planners.2 Foreign capital and engineers built the 1,000-kilometer line and, despite Anatolian Railway Company boasts that nine-tenths of the employees were Ottomans, Europeans in fact controlled the upper managerial levels. The construction materials, rolling stock, and coal also were imported. Building the line failed to stimulate much growth in the Ottoman industrial infrastructure and the economic impact of the railroad was restricted to the agricultural and mining sectors, but even these benefits were curtailed by the decision of the government that the railroad route be strategic and not economic in its orientation. The location of the line ignored many fertile areas, such as Sivas in central Anatolia, which worried prospective European bankers until the government adopted a subsidy arrangement called the kilometric guarantee system. Hie railway company was assured a certain amount of gross revenue per kilometer of track laid and in use. Government income sources, including the agricultural taxes of regions served by the railroad, were reserved for payment of the kilometric guarantees. Until 1911, when company proceeds began to exceed the guarantee levels, revenues from the areas most directly affected by the railroad were diverted from the Ottoman treasury and into the hands of the European shareholders. The kilometric guarantee system quieted investor fears but deprived the state of badly needed revenues. While the government mortgaged future revenues for the line, certain benefits did accrue to the state and its subjects. Opening of the relatively inaccessible interior increased the acreage and value of cultivated land, agricultural production, prices, exports, and marketing ratios. The line probably generated a redistribution or absolute increase in population as economic opportunity and security of life improved. The economic relationship of Istanbul with Anatolia was strengthened by a transport system which, in a region with few navigable waterways and little potential for canalization, offered unprecedented opportunities for bulk transport. But what of the social savings to the Ottoman 2 •'Charles Issawi, "Asymmetrical Development and Transport in Egypt, 1800-1914," in W. R. Polk and R. L. Chambers, eds.. Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East (Chicago, 1968), 383-400; Robert William Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth (Baltimore, 1964); George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu, The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890 (Cambridge, Mass., 1956); John N. Westwood. A History of Russian Railways (London, 1964); and Alexander Gerschenkron, "Problems and Patterns of Russian Economic Development," in Cyril E. Black ed.. The Transformation of Russian Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 42-72. For an Ottoman government view, see, for example. Ba? Bakanhk Arjivi (Prime Minister's Archives, Istanbul, hereafter BBA) Yildiz 14 88/38 88 12.

66

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman

Empire

people? If a shift to domestic production of food, especially for the cities, occurred, significant savings would be produced; for on the eve of railroad construction, over 1,000,000 Turkish pounds (about 4,000,000 U.S. dollars) annually flowed outward in payment for the imported wheat and flour consumed in Istanbul.3

E A R L Y E F F O R T S TO D I V E R T T R A F F I C TO T H E

RAILROAD

Before construction of the Anatolian Railway, transport facilities and costs precluded a meaningful role for Anatolia in the provisionning of Istanbul. A few coastal areas near Samsun and Mersin, with cheap bulk sea transport, were able to supply the city with limited quantities of flour and wheat. Railroads were found in a few areas, most notably on the Aegean littoral from which they extended inland and tapped the fertile valleys of the Menderes and Gediz rivers; but these lines, were directed not toward Istanbul but toward the great Aegean port of Izmir. 4 Caravan routes and wagon roads dominated the interior, and despite government efforts to construct better highways, roads often went unrepaired and became unusable after several years. Thus, commerce tended to follow narrow trails along which animal caravans made their way. Camels, the major beast of burden for longer hauls, typically carried between 500 and 550 pounds and could cover 15 to 20 miles a day. 5

•i The decline in rail transport rates noted later in this study and the eventual rise of railroad revenues above the kilometric guarantee amounts provide indirect evidence of rail-induced changes. The question of the line's economic impact requires further study; see, for example. Société du chemin de fer ottoman d'Anatolie. Bericht des Veruwaltungsrathes über das... Betriebsjahr (1. Januar bis 3!. December...) for the years 1889-1914 (hereafter Annual Report(s). From 1901, the reports appear under the German company name: die Anatolische EisenbahnGesellschaft. Great Britain. Accounts and Papers (hereafter AP) 1892, 84. Fawcett at Ankara, 16 June 1892 and 1893-1894. 97. Wrench at Istanbul, 24 April 1893. Zentrales Staatsarchiv. Potsdam, Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter ZStA.AA) Nr. 53738. Bl. 75 and 8730, Bl. 30. Ahmet Cevat Eren, Tiirkiye'de gôç ve gôçmen meseleleri Tanzimat devri, ilk kurulan Gôçmen Komisyonu, (ikanlan tiizükler (Istanbul, 1966), is a comprehensive account of Balkan Muslim refugees moving to Anatolia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many were settled by the government along the railroad. 4

Other lines included, in 1914, the 67 km. Adana-Mersin line in southeast Turkey, the 42 km. Bursa-Mudanya line in the northwest and the Bagdad Railway, extending some 400 km. from Konya to the Syrian border. In 1914, the Anatolian Railway comprised 36 per cent of all track in Turkey. See M. Hecker, "Die Eisenbahnen der asiatischen Türkei," Archiv für Eisenbahnwesen, 1914, pp. 744-800, 1057 1087, 1283-1321, and 1539-1584 for an excellent, technical summary of Ottoman railways. -"Edmund Naumann, Vom Goldnen Horn zu den Quellen des Euphrat (Munich, 1893), 421 for contemporary discussion of the controversy over camels' carrying capabilities. For discussion of the camel's superiority over wagon transport in the Middle East see R. W. Bulliet, "The Camel and the Wheel," in Annates staff, ed., Social Historians in Contemporary France (New York 1972), 46-58 and a book of the same title by Bulliet, (Cambridge, Mass., 1975).

The Impact of the Anatolian Railway

67

The high cost of animal transport raised prices intolerably. Even where comparatively good facilities existed, shipping costs multiplied the final selling price of grain. For example, the Erzurum region in eastern Turkey, a fertile grain-growing basin, was connected to the Black Sea port of Trabzon by perhaps the best and most heavily-traveled trade route in late-nineteenth-century Anatolia. In 1886, wheat transported over the 314 km. tripled in price as it reached the coast. Similarly, wheat shipped from Ankara, the first goal of the Anatolian Railway, tripled in price during the 361 km. caravan journey to Istanbul, while barley prices increased more than three and a half times.6 When the Anatolian Railway initiated service to Ankara in late 1892 and Konya in mid-summer 1895, caravans plying parallel routes reduced their charges. Caravan fees for the Ankara-lzmit journey were more than halved, from 1.44 to 0.65 piasters a ton-kilometer (the equivalent of about 4.5 U.S. cents a ton-mile) between 1889 and 1896, while along the Konya section, rates for the Konya-Izmit haul fell a third, from 1.47 to 1.01 piasters a ton-kilometer or 7.0 U.S. cents a ton-mile. 7 The railway company underestimated the flexibility of caravans. At first, it published a simple, three-category schedule of freight charges with a basic grain carrying rate of 0.55 piasters a ton-kilometer or 3.8 U.S. cents a ton-mile. This made freight charges for a ton of grain shipped the 486 km. rail route from Ankara to Izmit 12 per cent more than if shipped the shorter 361 km. caravan route (assuming the lowest caravan charge was applied). Such a state of affairs persisted only briefly. The company quickly undercut its camel competitors and supplemented the posted three-tier schedule with a welter of special rates. The Anatolian Railway Company, following long-established precedents in railroad tariffs, favored long haul and bulk shipments. Already by 1892, freight charges for through shipments from Ankara to Haydarpa§a had fallen to about 0.26 piasters a ton-kilometer; rail rates on this section of the line were now 60 per cent below the lowest camel carriage rate in Anatolia. In the following decade, through rates on the Ankara section declined further, to 0.18 piasters a tonkilometer. Soon after inauguration of service on the Konya section of the railroad, wheat and barley rates were lowered, to 0.18 and 0.21 piasters

Derived from Great Britain, Foreign Office (thereafter FO) 195/1584. Devey at Erzurum, July 4.1887; A+P 189-1891, 88, Hampson at Erzurum, July 16, 1891; Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d'Asie; géographie administrative, statistique descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l'Asie Mineure, I (Paris, 1892), 635-638; and Naumann, Vom Goldnen Horn, 42. G. Stratil-Sauer, "Cereal Production in Turkey," Economic Geography, 9 (October 1933). 326, notes that in c. 1933 grain shipped from Erzurum to Trabzon accrued transport costs greater than its original selling price in the interior. 7 Annual Report, 1892; Naumann, Vom Goldnen Horn, 421 and 426; ZStA,AA. Nr. 15071. Bl. 50-55; and, Noel Verney and George Dambmann. Les puissances étrangères dans le Levant en Syrie et en Palestine (Paris, Lyon, 1900), 226. The Ankara-lzmit rate of 0.65 piasters tkm. is the lowest caravan rate found by this writer.

68

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

respectively.8 To large shippers, the Konya and Ankara sections offered special discounts, from 43 to 50 per cent, for filling an entire railroad car. Additional discounts were given for utilizing 1,000 cars (presumably in a season) and, in one case, 100 cars. 9 These reductions and special rates transformed the caravans operating along paralled routes from primary carriers to a feeder system for the railroad, bringing grains to the stations rather than competing for their carriage to seaports served by the line. Whatever grain trade remained to the caravans along parallel routes probably derived from merchants dealing in quantities below the discount minimums or shipping to another inland station. The two lines worked to attract that commerce of the interior which had been oriented toward exit points other than the rail centers of Haydarpa§a, Izmit, and Derince on the coast. In the important commercial centers of east and southcentral Turkey, such as Kayseri, Yozgat, Eregli, and Karaman, the company established thirteen agencies to persuade local merchants to abandon the caravan and wagon routes to the Black and Mediterranean seas. Persuasion took the form of discounts. The local merchant would pay a fee, in one case 3.5 Turkish pounds, and obtain a certificate from the railroad agent in the town. Having arrived at a station, the certificate holder received discounts for rail shipment. The discount rate, commonly 20-25 per cent, varied in proportion to the intensity of competition with alternate modes of transport and the commercial importance of the town. At the vital trade center of Kayseri, merchants willing to ship goods to the Konya and Ankara sections obtained 40 and 60 per cent discounts. 10 These incentives, however, were only partially successful. On the Ankara section, while the railroad attracted much of the trade in high-value, low-bulk items such as opium and mohair, grain continued to exit along the traditional routes. For example, two-thirds of the commerce in heavy goods from Yozgat, five days from both Ankara and the Black Sea port of Samsun, continued to be directed towards the sea. At Kir§ehir, although "all the mohair and light wares" were diverted to the railroad, camels still carried "most of the grain" to Mersin At Kayseri, the Mersin route retained 60 to 70 per cent of the total trade. 11 The 8

Annual Reports, 1889-1898; FO 195/1934. Richards at Ankara, October 24, 1896; A+P 1907, 93, Waugh quoting Wylie at Konya, n. d. and 1894, 88, Cumberbatch at Ankara, April 20, 1894; A. Gabriel, Les Dessous de /'administration des chemins desfer ottomans d'Anatolie et de Bagdad (Istanbul, 1911), 80. ^Tarif IX of the Cahiec des Charges of the original concession for the Ankara line; also, clipping from the Berliner Tageblatt, February 1, 1897, enclosed with the Annual Reports in the Deutsche Bank archive. By comparison, rates on "granger railroads" in the United States averaged about 1.2 cents a ton-mile for all classes of freight in these years; Interstate Commerce Commission, Statutes of the Railways of the U.S. (annual 1887). '^Clipping from the London Times, September 9, 1903, in ZStA.AA, Nr. 6667. Bl. 15-15i; Annual Reports, 1895-1897; and Le journal de la chambre de commerce de Constantinople (hereafter JCCQ, September 9, 1893. p. 421. "Annual Reports, 1895-1897; Times clipping cited in n. 10. This impression is corroborated by a study of grain exports from the Anatolian ports of Samsun, Trabzon, and Mersin, which fail to decline after construction of the railroad. For a contrary statement, that most Kayseri exports

The Impact of the Anatolian Railway

69

lack of feeder rail lines clearly hurt the railway company's efforts; the agencies handled less than 5 per cent of total annual rail tonnage. 12 Aggregate caravan and rail charges in the above cases exceeded the cost of shipping goods directly by caravan to water transport and the line failed to capture a significant proportion of the grain exports from more distant production centers. The successes of the Ankara and Konya sections in dominating even local transport varied. The better record of the Ankara section derived from the relative absence of alternative markets to Istanbul and the existence of only animal transport competition. By contrast, the Istanbul market for many shippers on the Konya section was new, one to be added to existing opportunities on the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. For the Aegean trade, the Konya line battled not only caravans but also French and British-owned railroads coming from the port of Izmir. The ensuing rate wars of the late 1890s and early twentieth century appear to have ended badly for the German-built Anatolian Railway. For example, the lower rates of the Izmir-Kassaba line attracted two-thirds of the trade from Afyonkarahisar, a city on the Anatolian Railway but also, after 1897, joined to Izmir by rail 13 . The lower volume of traffic, relative to the Ankara section, on the Konya line derived not only from differences in regional productivity but also from die presence of Izmir-based railroad competitors. Caravan traffic directed towards the Mediterranean posed problems for the Konya section similar to those that had frustrated the Ankara line in competing for the commerce of the east-central towns of Kayseri and Kir§ehir. On the one hand, the prevailing 0.18 piaster rail rate for wheat shipped from Konya to Haydarpa^a appeared to offer an overwhelming advantage over the 0.70-1.00 piastre rate for caravans to the ports of Mersin, Silifke and Antalya. But much of the advantage was merely apparent: the distance from Konya to Haydarpa§a was approximately three times greater than to the nearest Mediterranean port. Traditional trading patterns remained strong. Perhaps fearful of competing in the Istanbul market, disenchanted with Anatolian Railway Company rates, and attracted by the higher produce prices often prevailing in the south, some merchants in die city of Konya refused to abandon the caravans. Further away from the Konya line, where similar motives may have been in effect, the combined caravan-to-Konya plus rail-to-istanbul costs proved prohibitive. Agencies and their discounts were of little help: towns such as Karaman, Nigde, and Eregli studiously ignored the announced benefits of rail shipment and retained trade links with the Mediterranean ports. 14 Early-twentieth-century supporters of were going via Ankara, see Revue commerciale du Levant, bulletin mensuel de la chambre de commerce française de Constantinople (hereafter Revue), Nr. 204, March 20, 1904, pp. 316329. n

Atmual

13

Reports, 1895 1897.

ZStA,AA, Nr. 15070. Bl. 29-30; clipping from the London Times, October 3. 1905, in ZStA.AA, Nr. 6667, Bl. 117-118, Revue Nr. 226, January 31, 1906. pp. 103-106. 14 ZStA,AA, Nr. 15071 Bl. 50-55 and Nr. 15070, Bl. 26 26r.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

the Anatolian Railway, while expressing hope that the Bagdad line, then under construction east-southeast from Konya, would alter the situation, admitted that the southern two-thirds of Konya province remained tied to the Mediterranean trade. In addition, they conceded that the northwest portion of the province was in the orbit of the two Izmir lines. 15 With its entry into the Turkish interior, the Anatolian Railway stimulated a sharp reduction in prevailing transport rates, especially in nearby regions, but exercised a relatively limited impact on overall trade patterns. By offering cheaper rates on the line itself, the railroad forced caravans operating in adjacent areas (and perhaps more distant ones as well) to lower their transport charges. But, with only two short branch lines, to the towns of Adapazar and Kiitahya (9 and 10 km. respectively) the railroad was unable to affect more distant areas. It did not serve as a magnet for most Anatolian commerce: grain transported by rail probably represented new production rather than redirected shipments. And while the line destroyed caravan competition on parallel routes, it failed to alter substantially existing caravan traffic to the seas in the north and soudi, and it unsuccessfully fought the Izmir lines for the trade oriented towards the Aegean coast. Thus, the orbit of the Anatolian Railway was restricted to perhaps 125,000 sq. km with an estimated population of 2,000,000. Included were the district of Izmit, the province of Ankara, and varying proportions of the provinces of Konya, Bursa, Sivas, and Kastamonu. 16 In these predominantly agrarian regions, most cultivated land was devoted to wheat and barley. Railroad shipments reflected the predominance of such activities and the relative poverty of the internal market. Exports comprised 80 to 85 per cent of all traffic and primarily consisted of agricultural products and other raw materials. Of crucial importance were grain shipments. On the Ankara and Konya sections, grain transport at worst (after two consecutive poor harvests in 1898 and 1899) accounted for 30 per cent of total rail tonnage. More typically, grains totalled between 50 and 75 per cent of all rail freight. 17 On the completed Ankara section, grain shipments at first averaged 34,000 tons a year and, in the following decade and a half, rose to 187,000 tons a year. Less dramatic increases occurred on the Konya section where early annual totals of 67.000 tons increased to only 81,000 tons at the period's close. In good

15 Hecker, "Die Eisenbahnen." 1539; ZStA.AA. Nr. 15070, Bl. 26 26r. For simular statements from less sympathetic observers see: Revue Nr. 191. February 28, 1903, pp. 287-294 and 333336; A+P 1904, 101A, Hampson at Konya, n.d. 16 ZStA,AA. Nr. 11796, Bl. 18-18r; Nr. 57336, Bl. 31; and Nr. 8730, Bl. 29. The population estimate is for 1903. 17

Ibid.;

Annual Reports, 1889-1914: Hecker, "Die Eisenbahnen" 1540-1541.

The Impact of the Anatolian Railway

71

years, for example in 1902, the two sections transported 400,000 tons of grain. 18 Along the line were markedly different zones of subsistence and export agriculture. Certain sections of the line, such as the Bozuyuk-Haydarpa§a stretch, produced barely enough to meet local needs: a handful of stations handled the traffic. On the Ankara section, the Hamidiye-Adapazar spur and the stations at Eski§ehir and Ankara together shipped 60 per cent of all merchandise while the Ankara station alone exported over 40 per cent. This last station forwarded 40 per cent of the wheat and 20 per cent of the barley carried by the railroad. On the Konya line, the two stations at Kutahya and Konya were the primary shipping points and handled between 45 and 66 per cent of total tonnage.19 Typically, over 98 per cent of all grains shipped on the two sections was not consumed in the railroad zone but forwarded to the ports of Haydarpa§a, Izmit and Derince. The majority, perhaps three-quarters, of rail grains left the Ottoman Empire, and most of this was probably barley. Although it was used in some Anatolian regions for bread, most residents considered it animal fodder. Derince handled most barley exports, helping satisfy beer drinkers in England and, after 1900, in Germany. Haydarpa§a received about two-thirds of rail-shipped wheat while the other two ports handled and exported approximately equal shares of the balance. About one-quarter of the wheat received at Haydarpa§a was sent to Istanbul but then exported. This wheat was probably of the better grades: Italy, France, and the Aegean islands purchased the harder wheats while England, the Low Countries and Germany bought the softer varieties.20 Rail-iransported cereals not exported consisted mainly of wheat and were consumed by two major groups in the empire. The Ottoman Ministry of War provided an important and often-overlooked indigenous market. Early in the railroad era, standing orders were issued to the quartermasters to purchase Anatolian grains only, regardless of price. In 1896, for example, 16,400 tons of wheat (11 per cent of all rail-shipped grains) were carried by the railroad company

18 LO

Annual Reports, 1889-1914; for a convenient table giving merchandise and grain shipments on the two sections, 1889-1907, see. E. Pech, Manuel des sociétés anonymes fonctionnant en Turquie, 4th ed. (Istanbul, 1909), 68. 1 ^Annual Reports, 1890-1903. There was some tendency for equalization of shipping among the Eskijehir-Konya section stations but Kutahya occasionally shipped nearly one-half of all merchandise. Availability of storage and handling facilities, as well as productivity, helped to determine the volume of goods shipped from a station. For example, the superior facilities at Eski$ehir attracted commerce from areas up to twenty hours' distant. See clipping from the London Times. December 28, 1904, in ZSt.AA. Nr. 11796, Bl. 104. 20 ZStA,AA, Nr. 8730, Bl. 29, 38 42 and Nr. 15071, Bl. 20r 23; JCCC. October 23, 1897. Annual Reports and other sources often listed only Getreide without further designation in the tables of commodities shipped. Wheat, barley and other grains were listed separately for five years, 1896, 1897, and 1902-1904. During these years, wheat averaged 60 per cent of all grain shipped, barley 37 per cent, and maize, oats, and rye the balance. See Annual Reports, 1896-1897ZStA.AA, Nr. 53738, Bl. 168 16Sr and Nr. 53739, Bl. 112.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

for military consumption. 21 Istanbul, the second major internal market, consumed one-eighth to one quarter of all rail-shipped grains.

W H E A T P R O V I S I O N I N G OF

ISTANBUL

In the late nineteenth century, a resident of Istanbul ate wheat rather than barley and, according to contemporary observers, daily consumed 0.45 to 0.69 kilograms, or about a pound, of flour. 22 For centuries, the Danubian plain "the father-provider of Constantinople", as well as the Crimea, Thrace, Egypt, and the southern Black Sea coast had been, as imperial possessions, suppliers of grain to Istanbul. To assure cheap bread for the city and thereby promote quietude, the government erected a formidable control apparatus, including placement of trusted personnel on provincial grain ships bound for the capital. A "most excellent white bread," noted by the seventeenth-century Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi, and its inferior successors came to the city via water transport, often in the form of provincial tribute under conditions of monopolistic state control. Imperial conquest had guaranteed bread for the city . 23 Through the misfortunes of war, first the Crimea (1783), then the future Romanian and Bulgarian states broke away, either gaining independence or being absorbed into Czarist Russia. 24 In addition, the Ottoman Empire by the midnineteenth century had signed away or lost its right to maintain monopolies, prohibit grain exports, and control Black Sea shipping. The door to free trade had been opened irrevocably by the British in 1838 and the former provinces now participated in world trade, sending their grain to the most advantageous market. While the political and economic scene had altered considerably, the previous, sea-borne provisioning pattern of Istanbul had remained intact. Complete statistics are lacking, but we know that in the middle 1870s and early 1880s, the lost provinces supplied most of the wheat and nearly all the flour consumed in the city. Thrace frequently provided about one-quarter of the wheat and the

^ A l t o g e t h e r the military purchased 13 per cent of all rail-shipped grains in 1896. See ZStA.AA, Nr. 8730. Bl. 30 and 38 42; Nr. 11655, Bl. 146 148; and Annual Report, 1896, which notes that 2 3 7 2 5 0 tons of Getreide were shipped for the military. ZStA.AA, Nr. 53736, Bl. 30 suggests that, in 1894, 12,000 tons (if cereals were procured in Anatolia for the military. 22 A methodological appendix discussing the problems of determining actual bread consumption in Istanbul and the procedures employed in this article is available from the author. 23 F o r the provisioning of Istanbul in the seventeenth-century, when Anatolian areas with easy sea access played a more important role than in the subsequent century, see Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans la seconde moitié du XVIF siècle (Paris, 1962), esp. 187-194; for the eighteenth century, see Liitfi Giiçer, "XVIII. yiizyil ortalarinda Istanbul'un iajesi liizumlu hububatin temini meselesi," Istanbul Oniversitesi, Ikhsat Fakiiltesi Mecmuasi, XI, I 4 (1949-1950), 397-416; and Marie Mathilde Alexandrescu-Dersea, "Contribution à l'étude de l'approvisionnement en blé de Constantinople au XVIII e siècle," Studia el Acta Orientalia I, 1957, pp 13-37. 24 E g y p t gained autonomy in 1768, lost it later in the century, and then, with the rise of Mehmet Ali in the early nineteenth century, embarked on a separate course. Thrace remained part of the empire but under constant threat of European attack.

The Impact of the Anatolian Railway

73

Turkish coastal areas occasionally contributed up to a fifth. Market summaries of wheat and flour received in Istanbul from 1885 to 1888 fail to mention wheat and flour supplies from the Anatolian interior and only rarely indicate the appearance of shipments from the southern Black Sea coast. During 1889, the first year for which market summaries provide more detailed data, all areas of Anatolian contributed 2 per cent of the wheat received. 25 As the tracks of the Anatolian Railway were being laid, Istanbul depended on sometimes-hostile states or precariously-held possessions for its bread needs. 26 At first, the railroad made little impact on the Istanbul bread market. Receipt of rail-area wheat was not mentioned until April 1893 and flour not until January 1894. Through 1896, when it provided one-quarter of wheat receipts, the line furnished only token amounts to the Istanbul market. Thereafter, the Anatolian Railway became a regular supplier of the city. During four years— 1897, 1901, 1902, and 1905—the railroad and other Anatolian areas furnished over 90 per cent of all wheat received. But during years such as 1899,1906, aild 1908, the railroad share fell below one-third, to as little as 12 per cent. 27 Factors such as price, quality, transport costs, climate, and political and world market conditions influenced the ability of rail-shipped wheat to enter the Istanbul market. For example, poor or bad harvests were recorded in six years: in 1892, 1894, 1898, 1899, 1907, and 1908. While the state prohibited grain exports or specifically directed rail provinces to forward surpluses to Istanbul, the crop failures were reflected both in diminished rail shipments and the lower contribution of rail-transported grains to total wheat receipts, political crises, for their part, could exercise a positive effect. In December 1896, as fighting on Ottoman Crete intensified and war with Greece became more likely, the Istanbul regime forbade die export of grains, and the railway company sent special trains to bring die Ankara wheat crop to Istanbul. 28 During the war year of 1897, Anatolia furnished 92 per cent of all Istanbul wheat

United States. House of Representatives. Consular Reports of the United States. 1876, pp. 890-894; ibid., Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Monthly Consular Reports, 1881, pp. 306-307; market summaries in the Istanbul newspapers Levant Herald, 1887-1889 and JCCC, 1885-1886. The market summaries from 1890 (Levant Herald) and the years 1892-1908 (JCCC) also were utilized in this study. The summaries, which note the wheat and flour quantities received and sold in Istanbul, were totalled to yield annual receipts of each commodity from the various suppliers. The tables derived from these summaries form the statistical basis for the remainder of the article, and they can be obtained from the author. 26 T h e pre-railroad contribution of Anatolia to Istanbul provisioning was held back by Ottoman tariff policy. Until 1893, wheat and, until 1894, flour, shipped by water within the empire paid 8 per cent internal customs duties. Turkey, Ministry of Justice, DUstur, birinci tertib, VI (Ankara, 1939), 1337 1338 and 1430-1433. Also, JCCC, March 11. 1893, p. 108; August 26, 1893, p. 403, and November 24, 1894. 27

Market summaries in Levant Herald, 1890, and JCCC, 1892-1908. 28 Hariciye Arjivi (Foreign Office archives, Istanbul), Idare Tasnifi, Dosya 191 and 296; JCCC, December 19, 1896. p. 501.

74

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Romania and Bulgaria, however, continued to loom large as wheat suppliers, quickly filling the gap during years of poor Anatolian harvests. In addition, when the two Balkan states enjoyed bumper crops or lacked more attractive alternative markets, they made important contributions to the wheat supply of Istanbul, not withstanding the availability of Anatolian grain. For example, in 1900, the two states furnished 44 per cent, and in 1906 Romania alone provided 66 per cent, of the wheat. While the size ot' Anatolian and Balkan harvests helped to determine the origins of Istanbul wheat, quality and price factors played their role as well. Railshipped wheat equal in quality to foreign grades frequently did not enjoy a price advantage. 29 Poor harvests naturally pushed Anatolian grain prices upwards. But also, as European and Ottoman merchants flocked to the new grain sources, prices in tlie interior jumped about 100 per cent in six years. These early price rises for rail-area wheat perversely occurred in tlie face of declining Istanbul and world market prices for wheat, temporarily retarding their export and consumption in tlie capital. Thereafter, grain prices in Anatolia moved in concert with Istanbul prices, which were already closely linked to those in London. The virtual absence of rail grains in Istanbul until 1896, while it derives partly from the novelty of tlie new marketing system, also coincides neatly with the trough of the 1873-1896 price depression. With the subsequent rise in prices and reduction in rail transport charges, rail shipments of wheat to the capital increased. It is not surprising that significant amounts of Anatolian wheat entered the Istanbul market around 1898, at the beginning of an upward movement in wheat prices. Production and transport costs in Anatolia were high. Aldiough, with government encouragement, modern agricultural machinery was coming into increasing use, most cultivators produced grain with primitive implements according to age-old practices. Anatolian grain exports enjoyed neither tlie technological advantages of tlie American forms nor the monopolistic wheat export policies of the Russian government. Rather, production costs were raised by the apparent but as yet undocumented increase in farm laborers' wages resulting from sparse populations and the spread of commercial agriculture offering better alternative wage opportunities in cash crop sectors such as cotton. Some larger landholders sought to escape these labor costs by introducing modem equipment 30 2Q Price data for both rail area and foreign wheats was available from the JCCC market summaries for eleven years: 1893. 18%, 1898 1903, and 1906-1908. During six years-1893, 1898, 1899, and 1906-1908-the price of comparative grades of rail wheat exceeded that of foreign. As will be demonstrated shortly, however, most Anatolian wheats entering the Istanbul market probably not comparable but inferior in quality to imported wheat. Iwere fv ZStA. AA, Nr. 8730, Bl. 46, for an excellent 1902 analysis of factors pushing up labor costs; also, ibid.. Nr. 6725, Bl. 139, for a 1912 report. To stimulate wider use of modern agricultural equipment, the state offered import duty exemptions and sent agronomists to demonstrate

The Impact of the Anatolian Railway

75

Already bearing high production costs, goods transported to the Istanbul market encountered more than rail charges. In any calculation of total shipping costs, wagon or camel haulage to the station, as well as storage and handling charges prior to rail shipment naturally must be included. Further fees were incurred down the line on the quay at Haydarpa§a for offloading and temporary storage, then again for crossing the water to Istanbul. In 1904, railroad loading, offloading, quay fees, the water journey, and actual rail haulage (but not including any pre-haulage transport or handling fees in the interior), represented 22 per cent of the market price of Anatolian wheat in Istanbul.31 Contemporaries, especially merchants, judged these rates and fees to be high. While such accusations are not unique to the Anatolian Railway Company and form part of a contemporary world-wide cacophony against railroad firms, they appear in this case to be justified. Turkish underdevelopment exercised a vital influence on railroad freight rates. The populace remained too poor to provide a broad market for imported goods and the basically unidirectional, coastward character of freight traffic in effect nearly doubled transport rates. Also, infertile stretches (especially on the Konya section) through which the line passed, railway company control of most export facilites, and the kilometric guarantee system all may have served to restrain downward movements in shipping rates. 32 Anatolian Railway Company charges appear high when compared with rail rates in the two major grain-producing states, the United States and Russia. Yet a comparison with transport rates in Bulgaria and Romania, the two big competitors in the Istanbul market, is perhaps more significant. In those two countries, the bulk of grain exports were carried down the Danube River at rates as low as 4 per cent of the ton-kilometer rates on the Anatolian Railway. 33 machinery in the railroad areas. See. for example, BBA: Orman 1318, §evval Nr. 5; Orman 1319, Zilkade Nr. 1; Bab-i Ali Evrak Odasi (hereafter BEO) 151706, 159642, 178438 and 179836. 3 'Haulage charges were 103 piasters and handling fees 63 piasters; see ZStA.AA, Nr. 15071. Bl. 54, and Nr. 15070, Bl. 126-126r. Also, Gabriel, Les Dessous, 80. These rates marked a sharp decrease from 1893, when haulage and handling charges of 208 piasters comprised 32 per cent of the market price of top-grade Ankara wheat. For comparative purposes: in the United States, the very low charges for the New YorkChicago haul accounted for about 9 per cent of the U.S. selling price of wheat. See JCCC, February 29, 1908, and compare with, for example, L. Girard, "Transport," in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, VI, Part I. The Industrial Revolutions and After (Cambridge, 1966) 265. 32

H e c k e r , "Die Eisenbahnen" 1539-1542; A+P 1904. 101A, Waugh at Istanbul, March 21, 1904; and FO 195/1977. Shipley at Ankara, December 6, 1897, quoting the railway report of Major Law. The relationship between the Anatolian Railway Company as a foreign-owned enterprise and the level of its shipping and storage charges is being investigated by the present writer. 33 A railway company director, von Gwinner, declared the Anatolian Railway rates to be the lowest in Europe, overlooking the fact that in many countries, eg., Germany, railroads were instruments of national economic policy and their rates often a product of internal political compromise. In Prussia, grain freight rates between 1891 and 1893 were 0.15 piasters tkm. for the first 301 km. and 0.10 piasters thereafter. But in 1894, a higher, flat rate of 0.22 piasters tkm. was introduced as part of the post-Bismarckian realignment in imperial Germany. In the

76

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Following increases in world wheat prices after 1896, rail-shipped wheat assumed a commanding but not assured position in the Istanbul market. The inability of the railroad to bring the capital irrevocably into its orbit stemmed partially from the world market conditions under which Anatolian wheat competed for the Istanbul trade. Nearby major grain-producing states enjoying direct water access to the city remained important elements in its wheat provisioning. Grain transport from the Anatolian interior to Istanbul, by contrast, required breaking the rail journey at Haydarpa§a for water carriage to the millers. The relative cost of delivered Anatolian wheat, which determined its competiveness, also derived form the level of Turkish development. The foreignowned line with monopolistic control over parts of the transportation chain, the backwardness of Anatolian agriculture, the lack of an internal market, and the nature of rail traffic exercised a certain, often decesive, influence. And finally, the government decision to select a railroad route according to strategic criteria, while itself deriving from Ottoman backwardness, functioned to weaken further the impact of the line as an economic force.

ANATOLIAN

FLOUR

ON THE I S T A N B U L

MARKET

As seen, rail-shipped Anatolian wheat assumed a position of major importance in the post-1896 Istanbul market. The ingredients of Istanbul bread, however, arrived in two forms: both as wheat later ground by millers but also as flour which been milled elsewhere. 34 The city's total breadstuff receipts can be determined by reducing the wheat arrivals to flour equivalents (flour extracted from wheat) and adding these equivalents to arrivals of flour. The results show that between 1889 and 1908, one-to two-thirds of breadstuff receipts usually reached the city as flour. Flour from the railroad regions, however, normally comprised only 1 to 3 per cent of these flour receipts, a negligible contribution that seriously diminished the line's overall impact on the supply of breadstuffs. In 1902, for example, the rail share of wheat receipts peaked at 94 per cent while flour shipments were a near-record 4 per cent; when the volume of these arrivals

U.S., grain shippers paid, around 1897, as little as the equivalent of 0.06 piasters a tonkilometer (about 0.4 cents a ton-mile) for the Chicago-New York run and 0.13 piasters (0.9 cents) elsewhere in the country, and these rates were subject to widespread rebating. In Russia, about 1888, wheat shippers paid the equivalent of 0.26 piasters up to 386 km. but 0 . 0 8 piasters a ton-kilometer for the next 1 336 km. These rates were reduced substantially in 1893. In France, on the Railway du Nord, rates, for a run equivalent to the Ankara-Haydarpa^a trip, averaged the equivalent of 0.07 piasters tkm. In the Danubian areas, the river continued to carry over 7 0 per cent of all exports. Grain shipments down the river cost 0.01-0.03 piasters a ton-kilometer These rates, for example, were 11-33 per cent of the Chicago-New York rail rates. U.S. rates quoted were derived from Fogel, Railroads, 4, 24; Taylor, The American Railroad Network, 2; and Hugo Richard Meyer, Government Regulation of Railway Rates (New York, 1905), esp. 4-10, 144, 164-165. For the actual, over-all average rale on "granger" railroads, see note 9. ' ^ Z S t A . A A , Nr. 53736, Bl. 36-38, contains a good summary of flour-milling facilities in Istanbul. A report, drawn from a common source, was published in JCCC, July 20, 1895, p. 338, and also includes a survey of the various flours consumed in the city.

The Impact of the Anatolian Railway

77

is compared with receipts of all breadstuffs, the railroad contribution falls to 67 per cent. 35 Problems of quality retarded acceptance of Anatolian wheat by millers and consumers. Insufficient care in the field, permitting a variety of grains to grow together, showed itself in the gathered harvest. Much Anatolian grain, some from tax farmers' sales, was mêlée, a mixture of wheat with rye and other impurities, a problem that was exacerbated by railway company policy. Until 1902, the firm imposed, as did its contemporaries in Europe and the United States, a higher shipping rate on rye than on wheat. In Anatolia, some unscrupulous shippers mixed rye with wheat, and although they personally benefitted from the higher selling price of die latter, dieir actions deterred acceptance of the grain by consumers and, therefore, by millers.36 Anatolian flour, milled in die interior and shipped by rail, also encountered formidable competition in Istanbul, from the higher-quality production of die Balkan and south Russian mills and from low-quality but commensurately priced Marseilles flour. The Istanbul price of rail-transported Anatolian flour was far below that of all foreign flours except that from Marseilles and, during its occasional forays into the Istanbul market, from the United States. 37 But rail-shipped Anatolian flour contributed minimally to annual flour receipts. More substantial use was inhibited by the presence of impurities that rendered Istanbul milling of the wheat problematic and less acceptable to consumers. The crucial problem, however, was the lack of Anatolian mills capable of producing desirable flour in exportable quantities. Steampowered mills of either the traditional millstone or roller type were a rarity in the interior. To found industrial enterprises, entrepreneurs were required to obtain official consent, and Ottoman records indicate that, during die period 1890-1908, only five such applications were filed for the Anatolian Railway districts. On the Ankara section, permissions were granted for two steam mills in the Adapazar area and two near die Ankara railroad station (bringing the total number of modern mills 3 5

Derived from market summaries in Levant Herald, 1889-1890 and JCCC, 1892-1908. Supporting tables are available from the author. During 12 years of the period under study, the railroad regions supplied 1 per cent or less of total flour receipts. i6

DUstur, birinci tertib, VII (Ankara, 1941), 362-364, for an 1899 imperial decree exempting rye from internal customs duties in an effort to deter shippers from mixing rye with wheat. JCCC, June 14, 1902, p. 185, notes the railway company abolishing the discriminatory rate against rye. See, ZStA.AA, Nr. 53736. Bl. 30 and JCCC. March 14, 1896 for examples of miller and consumer attitudes towards the mixed grain. The continued presence of mêlée also suggests that cultivators were not committed sufficiently to the cash economy to take the steps necessary for the removal of rye from the wheal fields. 37 Market summaries in JCCC, 1892-1908. Marseilles provided over one-half of flour receipts in two years, 1900 and 1908, and more than one-quarter of the annual receipts in 1899 and 1907. Romania, Bulgaria and Russia generally furnished between 67 and 97 per cent of the flour receipts.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

in the latter town to three). The only steam mill along the Konya section was installed by a high-ranking Ottoman official who gained consent in 1907 for its construction near (lie Konya station. Modern mills were in operation elsewhere but were few in number and satisfied primarily local needs. 38 The maximum recorded flour shipments by rail, to unspecified destinations, reached only 18,000 tons in 1913. While the six-fold increase in two decades is impressive relatively, the peak volume of rail-transported flour represented a minor factor in satisfying the appetite of Istanbul.39 The government encouraged the foundation of modern mills in the provinces with tax and import duty exemptions but did not execute a consistent policy towards increasing the use of Anatolian wheat and flour in Istanbul. Paternalistic notions of govenment collided with official programs of agricultural development and with the advantages of self-sufficiency in food. The state, desiring to provide the populace with inexpensive bread, refused to act in 1894 when Istanbul millers, fearing competition from foreign flours, demanded imposition of a 25 per cent import duty. Similarly, it rejected the recommendation of its own agronomists for a tariff on imported grains as a means of stimulating indigenous production. In any event, international tariff agreements which prohibited unilateral alteration of duties, and European interest in preserving markets in the Ottoman Empire, would have precluded actual implementation of the measures. 40 In 1896, the dual roles of bread guarantor and development agent merged; when Anatolian wheat prices fell below foreign, the government beneficently protected consumers and producers, by restricting Istanbul bakers and millers to the use of Ottoman grains. But as soon as the price of indigenous wheat rose, it abandoned the producers. Further, die state generally set (lie price of bread on the basis of the lower-priced wheat, whether Ottoman or foreign and, in short, favored the Ottoman grain consumer over the Ottoman producer.41 By doing so, it exacerbated the problems facing Anatolian wheat in its competition with foreign wheats and flours.

38 B B A : BEO 86748, 112394, 202678; Nafia 1316, Safer Nr. 5; Nafia 1324, Zilkade Nr. 1 and Zilhicce Nr. 2. ZStA.AA. Nr. 15071, Bl. 22-27, which notes that the Ankara mill was run with imported coal. Revue N'r. 227, February 28, 1906, p. 139. 39

A n n u a l Reports, 1889-1414. In the 1890s, flour shipments averaged 2,500 tons, climbed to an annual average 8,400 tons between 1900 and 1910 and, in the final prewar years, to 16,000 tons.

40 JCC, October 6, 1894. p 471 and March 28, 1896. The state did cooperate in impeding the entry of U.S. flour through a variety of ruses concerning its gluten content and elasticity. Groups seeking to block the imposition of import duties included foreign diplomatic representatives and, probably, Istanbul merchants with established connections in the flour-exporting countries. For a more exhaustive treatment of government relations with Istanbul millers and bakers and the question of bread prices in Istanbul see M. Hoell, "The Ticaret Odasi: Origins, Functions, arid Activities of the Chamber of Commerce of Istanbul, 1885-1899," (doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 1973), 151-174. 41

T h e 1897 Anatolian contribution to Istanbul wheat receipts may have resulted f r o m the government decision as well as from the war with Greece. For preference to consumers, see. for example, JCCC, March 7, 1896, p. 109; October 5, 1896, p. 469; November 16, 1901, pp. 361-

The Impact of the Anatolian Railway

79

CONCLUSION

The financial performance of the Anatolian Railway Company was poor. The average 5 to 6 per cent dividend annually paid between 1891 and 1914 often exceeded actual net profits, after interest charges. Other yardsticks support this conclusion. Initial investment capital per kilometer was considered high, as a result of both technical difficulties and "speculative excesses," and the same view was expressed towards general overhead costs, which were said to be inflated by clumsy, wasteful, and highly-paid European management. For the German financier, investor, and government, however, the less than spectacular profits were a disappointement that perhaps was offset by the establishment of important German influence in the Ottoman Empire. 42 The record of the railroad, when viewed from the Ottoman side, likewise is mixed. The lack of branch lines (a vital part of the American railroad system) to funnel goods more cheaply to the Anatolian Railway limited its impact on transport patterns in the interior, where caravans remained vital to the commercial needs of a large part of Anatolia. Nonetheless, the modernity of the transport system inspired the beginnings of a response in agriculture. Within its restricted zone of influence, the railroad brought many cultivators into the world market nexus, facilitated more extensive adoption of commercial agriculture, and stimulated an important shift in the origins of Istanbul wheat. The battered Ottoman balance of payments benefited both from railroad exports and partial replacement of imported wheat by indigenous wheat in the capital. The industrial sector remained virtually unchanged. Continued receipts of imported flour underline die weakness of the stimulus to industry and render the significance of the provisioning shift less meaningful. Fifteen years after completion of the railroad, foreign sources still satisfied half of Istanbul's bread ingredient needs. These quantities mark not only the presence of nearby, water-linked grainproducing states but also the political weakness and the industrial and agricultural backwardness of (lie Ottoman Empire. The lack of tariff barriers and the low or inconsistent quality of Anatolian wheat contributed to insufficiency in flour milling facilities. Investment in additional modern mills remained too risky for most entrepreneurs, both in Istanbul and in the interior regions now, ironically, more exposed to foreign competition by the railroad.

362; December 7, 1901, p. 385; and May 17, 1902, p. 153. Also, JCCC, April 25, 1896, p. 199. Encouragement to producers took the form of import duty exemptions for agricultural machinery (see n. 29) and free seed grain distribution to cultivators along the railroad and elsewhere. See, for example. BBA: Orman 1312. Safer Nr. 2; Orman 1314, Safer Nr. 3; BEO 160233, 203203 and 221964. 42 Derived from Hecker, "Die Eisenbahnen" 1082, 1545-1546 and tables on 1554-1558. Also, Morawitz, Les finances, 586-594. The pressure which the German government applied to bring the Deutsche Bank into the Bagdad railway project suggests that the bank was not impressed with the financial performance of the Anatolian Railway Company.

80

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

The railroad's major contribution, as the government had intended, lay not in economic development but in added military strength. By making possible the rapid shuttling of troops, the line contributed to the Ottoman military victory in the 1897 war with Greece, and helped prolong Ottoman resistance in World War I. The capital could now be fed in wartime from indigenous sources, with fewer of the severe dislocations such efforts previously had caused. For these strategic and economic benefits, the Ottoman Empire paid a high price. The subsidy paid to the company from 1893 to 1909 totalled 3,500,000 Turkish pounds, which exceeded the total agricultural tax revenues from Ankara province during those years. Put another way, it equalled one-half of all revenues collected in Anatolia during a typical year in the mid-1890s. The cost may have been too high. The railroad, splendid in its technological modernity, neither restored Ottoman power nor stimulated industrial growth. Instead it further harnessed an agrarian economy to European needs. Indeed, as a strategic instrument of the government, die railroad may have served to stave off change by limiting broader economic development while helping stabilize the military power of the existing regime and rewarding European backers of imperialism. Looked upon as the investment of an industrial nation in a less developed country, the railroad provided inadequate compensation for the increased indebtedness and economic subordination that accompanied its construction.

OTTOMAN WOMEN, HOUSEHOLDS, AND TEXTILE MANUFACTURING 1800-1914

In spite of their central place in Ottoman social and economic life, we know littie about nineteenth-century Ottoman manufacturing women, the households in which they lived and worked, their economic activities, and changes in these pursuits over time. Women and their households mediated the process of growing Ottoman participation in the world economy, and changes in household processes of production and the household division of labor should be understood as adaptations to changing market opportunities, both domestic and international. Thus, I believe, there are relations between changes in Ottoman household economies and the regional and world economies of the nineteenthcentury. But to view the evolution of nineteenth-century Ottoman household economies as merely a story o f transformation from subsistence to market production would be too simplistic. Many Ottoman households already were committed to manufacturing for the market, at varying levels, well before 1800. As a famous example, in the town of Ambelakia in Ottoman Thessaly, the manufacture of red yarn was a family business in the eighteenth century. "Every arm, even those of the children, is employed in the factories; whilst the men dye the cotton, the women prepare and spin it." 1 Vigorous and vibrant putting-out systems interlaced the Ottoman Empire, exchanging raw materials and semi-processed goods among its European, Anatolian, and Arab provinces. Women and men in north Anatolian towns such as Zile and Merzifon, for example, received raw cotton from the Mediterranean south and spun it into thread. Some of the newly made thread was exported to the Ottoman Crimea, and local weavers used some to make a coarse calico for regional use and for export. 2 Other Ottoman households were subsistence

'David Urquhart, Turkey and Its Resources (London: Saunders and Otley, 1833), 47-51. 24. ^Halil tiialcik, "Osmanli pamuklu pazan, Hindistan ve Ingiltere: Pazar rekabetinde emek maliyetinin rölü," Middle Bast Technical University, Studies in Development J979-80, special issue, 1-65; Public Record Office (London), Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 78, various reports by Brant at Trabzon in the 1830s.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman

Empire

producers as of 1800 and, in declining numbers, remained so throughout the period. Also, as I will show, the nature of Ottoman household economies varied by region, as did changes in those economies. A focus on households and women's work is a key to properly understanding the history of Ottoman manufacturing in the nineteenth century. It is widely held that Ottoman manufacture "declined" in the age of the European Industrial Revolution. But what is meant by decline? Perhaps there was no decrease in gross Ottoman industrial output between 1800 and 1900. After all, the domestic Ottoman market as well as the export market for select Ottoman manufactures was much larger at the beginning of the twentieth century than before (see below). 3 The oft-cited Ottoman industrial decline may in fact reflect a decrease in the output generated by organized guild male labor. It thus is critical to examine die household division of labor by gender. Manufacturing output by urban guilds, which were male dominated, did fall off sharply in many areas. But, as I will demonstrate, manufacturing production by females working at home did not merely continue but sharply expanded in some regions and textile handicraft sectors. In addition, factory labor increased, particularly after 1880, and the majority of the textile workers were girls and women. Rural households accounted for at least 80 percent of the Ottoman population and usually consisted of the nuclear family, that is, a husband and wife (usually one) and their children. Rural households in the Black Sea coastal areas of Anatolia averaged 6.5 persons and as few as 5.3 persons elsewhere, figures that place Anatolia just above the average for preindustrial Europe. Multiple-family households in rural Anatolia did not account for more than 30 percent of the total, whereas simple, or nuclear, households made up 50 to 6 0 percent. 4 In the capital city of Istanbul, similarly, very good data reveal that the extended family made up only 16 percent of all households counted. Upper-class Istanbul households averaged 5.7 persons, and those further down the social ladder averaged 4 5 persons. Polygyny was rare in the capital, involving only 2 percent of all married Muslim men. In the Arab town of Nablus, the polygyny rate was higher, 16 percent of the men enumerated. 5 It must be stressed that in \ j v e r (he period, the population increased al ail annual rate of 0.8 percent; the territorial base of the state, however, steadily shrank. Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Turkey, 18001914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 11. ^Justin McCarthy, "Age Family and Migration in the Black Sea Province of the Ottoman Empire," International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (1979): 309-23; McCarthy, Muslim and Minorities: The Population of Anatolia and the End of the Empire (New York: New York University Press, 1983), 110-11; FO, Further Reports from Her Majesty's Diplomatic and Consular Agents Abroad Respecting the Condition of the Industrial Classes and Purchasing Power of Money in Foreign Countries (London: Harrison and Sons, 1871). ''Alan Düben, "Turkish Families and Households in Historical Perspective," Journal of Family History 10 (Spring 1985): 75-97; Düben, "Muslim Households in Late Ottoman Istanbul" (unpublished paper, 1986); Judith E. Tucker, "Marriage and Family in Nablus, 1720-1856: Toward a History of Arab Marriage," Journal of Family History 13, no. 2 (1988): 165-79; Tuckei in N. R. Keddie and B. Baron, eds., Women in Middle Eastern History (New Haven 1991).

Ottoman Women and Manufacturing

83

both urban and rural hquseholds, the males often were absent, engaged in wageearning labor at sites some distance from their homes. Migratory labor, involving work in other rural areas as well as in both remote and nearby urban centers, was a normal condition of existence for Ottoman families. Finally, a considerable amount of time in the average Ottoman rural household was devoted to manufacturing activities, sometimes for family use and at other times for sale. That manufacturing was an everyday part of Ottoman rural (and urban) life has been overlooked almost completely in the literature on both Ottoman manufacturing and Ottoman agriculture. Scholars of manufacturing have focused on urban male guilds, whereas researchers of the countryside usually have considered only crop growing and animal husbandry. Rural households were not simply agricultural producers. Instead, they were engaged in a mix of economic activities, for example, crop growing, mining, manufacturing, and fishing, the composition of which changed according to region, season, and opportunity. If crop prospects were poor, then the family would devote increased attention to manufacturing for sale to earn cash for purchasing foodstuffs. Information on the nineteenth-century Bursa silk industry offers powerful hints but frustratingly little concrete data concerning the impact of female labor on changes in the gender division of household labor. For centuries, the town of Bursa and its environs had been renowned for rich brocades and fabrics. The gender division of labor in the industry varied according to its rural or urban location. Village families, both male and female members, provided the raw silk, unraveled in a single length from the cocoon. In the town itself, however, silk spinning may have been an exclusively female occupation as the century opened, as it was in the city of Damascus, located in a Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire. At Bursa, as in Damascus, male weavers, organized into guilds, wove almost all the silk cloth produced, although a few female workers were engaged as well. The involvement of the guildsmen weavers in the Bursa silk industry fell as silk cloth production plummeted after 1830. For several decades, redundant male weavers may have found work in the expanding industry of raw silk, which at that time was spun largely by hand. In 1812, total production of raw silk at Bursa, all of it manually reeled by both men and women, averaged 150,000 pounds. 6 Subsequently, thanks to rising foreign demand and new technology, output soared. The new technology came in the form of steam-powered machinery, housed in factories, that spun die raw silk from cocoons. In 1850 such spinning mills produced 10 percent of total raw silk. By 1860, when Bursa raw silk output equaled 1.5 million pounds, 98 percent of it was reeled in a factory setting—in nearly fifty mills that employed at least 4,200 persons. In the Bursa factories, the labor force was entirely female, both girls and women, except for male superintendents and mechanics tending the engines. The 6

H a I i l lnalcik, "Bursa," Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 1:1333-36; Hatt-i humayun #16757, 1225/1810, Ba$bakanlik Ar$ivi (hereafter BBA).

84

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

same gender distribution simultaneously came to prevail in the silk-spinning mills being established in the Lebanon region, similarly founded to meet mounting European demand. In the first days of these mills, entrepreneurs at Bursa and in the Lebanon struggled with a labor source reluctant to enter a factory, and in both regions they employed a variety of methods, sometimes remarkably similar, to overcome impediments to labor recruitment. Both sets of entrepreneurs brought in women from France and Switzerland, experienced in silk reeling, to instruct in the new technology and to demonstrate by example that women could work safely in such factories. 7 These entrepreneurs also found allies in religion, both Christianity and Islam. Around the 1860s, the Roman Catholic pope issued a decree permitting Bursa-area girls of Armenian background to work in the mills, and in Lebanon local ulama as well as the Christian clergy played key roles in persuading local girls to work under foreign women supervisors in foreign-owned silk-reeling mills. 8 Appealing to the workers' more worldly needs, Bursa factory owners also offered high wages; a reeler in the mid1850s earned five times as much as she needed for her daily bread. But wages quickly dropped. Labor supplies were augmented as urban Turks from Bursa and village girls from surrounding areas became available; silk reelers soon were among the most poorly paid factory workers in Ottoman manufacturing. The "lowest daily wages were paid in the silk (and tobacco) factories in which mainly women worked."9 Married Turkish women in the city provided at least some of the labor. According to one European observer in the late 1860s, this wage labor enhanced the women's status in the eyes of their husbands since it increased family income. And, he approvingly noted, since the women dutifully returned to the women's quarters on coming home from work, wage labor had brought only advantages to the Ottoman Turkish family at Bursa. 10 Bursa entrepreneurs also turned to labor supplies outside the city. They recruited "very" young girls from surrounding rural areas and housed them in dormitories built adjacent to the mills. These village girls, who began as apprentices as early as ten years of age, arrived in caravans for the labor-intensive reeling season. When the season ended, the girls and young women, who won a certain local fame for their purchases of 7

Consular Reports of the United Stales. Department of State, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter CRUS), reel 1194 R.# 2, Schwaabe at Brousse 1 Oct. 1847; Régis Delbeuf, Une excursion à Brousse et à Nicée (Istanbul, 1906), 140 n. 1, 142, 166-69; author's interview with Rana Akdi$ Akay at Bursa, June 1986; cf. wages and prices cited in Issawi, ed.. Economic History, 44-45, and FO 78/905, Sandison at Bursa, 6 Aug. 1852. For a fuller account, see Donald Quataert, "The Silk Industry of Bursa, 1880-1914," Collection Turcica III: Contribution à l'histoire économique et sociale de l'Empire Ottoman (Paris: Peeters, 1983), 481-503. ^Akay 1986 interview; Edward C. Clark, "The Emergence of Textile Manufacturing Entrepreneurs in Turkey, 1804-1968" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1969), 34; Roger Owen, "The Silk Reeling Industry of Mount Lebanon, 1840-1914," in The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. Huri Islamoglu-înan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 276-77. ^Quotation is from A. Gündiiz Okçiin, trans., Osmanli sanayii. 1913, 1915 yitlari sanayi istatistiki (Ankara: Ankara Universitesi Siyasal Bilimler Fakiiltesi Yayinlari, 1970), 22; also see CRUS, reel T194 R. #2, Schwaabe at Bursa, 1 Oct. 1847. '^Alexander Treshorn von Warsberg, Ein Sommer im Orient (Wien: C. Gerold's Sohn, 1869), 146.

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fashionable clothing, as did die Lebanon reelers, returned home with "practically all" of their wages. Once married, they generally quit the factory and usually did not return unless widowed.11 But beyond their clothing purchases, we know little about how the wages were used—whether the girls retained the money and brought it into their marriages or turned it over to their parents. A tidbit of information from the 1850s implies that the young women helped to support their families, but we cannot generalize from that. There are other uncertainties. It is not totally clear if there was a net increase in the use of female labor in the silk industry or simply a continuation, in mechanized form, of established patterns and levels. Nor is it known if this work represented the entry for most families into wage labor or their shift from one wage-earning activity to another. The rise of mechanized silk reeling does coincide exactly with the sharp decline in cotton spinning in the Bursa area during the pre-1850 period; the availability of (temporarily) high-paying jobs in silk reeling might well have accelerated the decline of local cotton spinning. The overwhelming predominance of female labor in the Ottoman silkspinning industry can be explained by several factors. The Ottoman economy generally was labor scarce, and employing women solved the serious problem for factory owners of finding cheap labor. Also, the mills did not provide a reliable source of full-time income for their workers. After the great burst of factory building, the industry suffered from over-capacity and spinning factories were consistently underutilized. In die 1850s, the 1870s, the 1890s, and the early twentieth century, we are told, they typically operated not more dian two hundred days per year. The mills thus offered a kind of part-time labor that corresponded well widi Ottoman society's view of female labor as supplemental. Such an activity also fit nicely with die time demands that raising silkworms placed on Ottoman families. Given the prevailing labor scarcities around Bursa, for example, it is hardly coincidental that cocoon raisers devised a method for feeding the silkworms that reduced the labor input by 70 percent, compared with methods in France and Italy. Part-time factory work also was compatible with the demands of agricultural and domestic tasks on the workers. Mechanized silk reeling, as it evolved in the Ottoman lands, interfered minimally widi die preexisting division of labor within the household, whether rural or urban. For the factory owner, the arrangement had only one long-term disadvantage. Throughout die entire period, most factories operated well below capacity, although they often could have spun profitably the year round. 12

1

' S e e sources cited in n. 5, above.

12

' S e e sources in n. 5, above. Also see Hiidavendigâr Vilayeti Salnamesi (hereafter VS) 1324/1906, 278; CRUS, reel T194; FO 195/299, Sandison at Bursa, 24 May 1851, 195/393, Sandison at Bursa, 13 Aug. 1855. To reduce labor costs, much of the industry moved out of the city altogether; at the turn of the century, 75 percent of the mills' productive capacity was situated in towns and villages outside of Bursa. La revue commerciale du Levant: Bulletin de la chambre de commerce française de Constantinople, 30 Nov. 1909.

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Girls and women played an essential role in three arenas of textile production. They made yarn and cloth at home for immediate use by household members, they produced at home for the market, and they labored in workshops, away from the home setting.13 Until the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a large proportion of female labor in textile production had been involved with spinning, with either the wheel or the distaff. But the import of Europeanmanufactured factory-spun cotton yarn then rose incredibly, dramatically affecting the economic and social status of Ottoman women. Annual Ottoman imports of cotton yarn, a mere 150 tons in the early 1820s, rose to some 7,750 tons in the 1870s. The impact of this increase must have varied considerably, depending on whether the women had been spinning primarily for the marketplace or for domestic use. For most commercially oriented female spinners, the foreign yarn meant, in the long run, the loss of their spinning jobs and, in the short term, sharply declining wages as they accepted lower wages to compete with die cheap and strong imported product. To the extent that commercial cotton spinning was a preserve of women, the use of imported thread contributed to the displacement of these females from the work place. And if the unemployed women did not find wage employ in die weaving of cloth from the imported yarn, the work force might have become more gender homogenous over time, that is, more exclusively male. This last assumption, however, is questionable. One of the major trends in nineteenth-century Ottoman manufacturing was the shift from guild to nonguild labor, quite probably accompanied by a rise in the importance of female labor in the overall production of cotton cloth and other textiles. If die rising imports of yarn had a negative or mixed impact on commercial yarn spinners, the effect on women spinning for home use was much more certain and definitely more positive. The hand spinning of yarn required to provide the average Ottoman family's clothing needs consumed a vast amount of time, an estimated one-twelfth of the woman's total labor output. 14 This household division of labor began to change in the second quarter of the nineteenth century when imports of machine-made European yarn began flooding into the Ottoman Empire. Purchase of imported yarn must have been attractive to hand spinners, who thus were relieved of a tinie-consuming and quite unremunerative task. Between 1820 and 1870 yarn imports freed an estimated 160,000 Ottoman women (calculated on the basis of full-time job equivalents) from the onerous and unprofitable task of spinning cotton. 15 The release of these women dramatically affected their households' distribution of labor through a combination of increased leisure time, increased cloth production for family

13 T h e documents consulted for this study often were unhelpful or misleading on the gender identity of the work force. English- and Turkish-language sources usually refer to worker or i$fi without elaboration, only occasionally noting the person's gender. French- and Germanlanguage sources designate workers generally as ouvrier or arbeiler and sometimes use these masculine forms to refer to workers who, I knew from other sources, were female. 14 Urquhart, Turkey, 149-50.

' '.'jevket Pamuk, "The Decline and Resistance of Ottoman Cotton Textiles, 1820-1913,' Explorations in Economic History 23 (1986): 205-25.

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consumption, and increased market production of agricultural commodities and cloth to pay for the purchased yarn. In spite of the advantages, however, poverty kept many Ottoman women spinning cotton yarn at home both for domestic consumption and for sale. Since many families did not assign monetary value to the time spent spinning, the homespun yarn could undersell the European product. Though not necessarily yarn of comparable quality, it was usable for making lower-grade clothes. As the price of imported yarn and textiles fell steadily over the course of the century, so did the remuneration of spinners producing for the market. In the winter of 1857, "all" the Kurdish women in the districts surrounding Diyarbakir occupied themselves by spinning for men in the town who wove bez cloth. These women were too poor to buy the raw cotton for spinning, much less imported yarn. Instead die women gathered and picked cotton and in return retained a small percentage of it. A woman would spin six pounds of cotton into yarn and then exchange it in town for nine pounds of raw cotton. She kept at this cycle until she had enough twist, "which the husband converts into cloth, using for his family what is necessary and selling the rest." 16 Hand spinning persisted through at least the 1860s around Erzurum, and in the Sivas region it was commonplace during the late 1880s. "What goods are manufactured such as carpets, rough woolen cloth, yarn, leather is done by the people (mostly the women) at their homes.... Great quantities of yarn are used. It is now all made by the people (mostly the women) at home on the rudest kind of spinning wheels." 17 In the early twentieth century, at the great cloth-manufacturing center of Aleppo, women working at home annually spun an estimated 100,000 kilograms of cotton yarn used for making the coarser cloths. 18 At nearby Mara§, spinning yarn did "not constitute a profession properly speaking." Nonetheless, women "in all die poor homes—that is, among nearly all families... during their spare moments" annually spun 90-100,000 kilograms of cotton yarn. 19 Ottoman girls and women dominated the cotton and wool yarn spinning work force in the steam-powered mills that emerged late in the nineteenth century. These were concenrated in Salonika and inland Macedonia as well as in Izmir, Adana, and Istanbul. Young girls formed the bulk of the labor force and, in common with their European and American (and Bursa) sisters, did not remain long enough to acquire skills, much to the iiritation of the owners. 2 0 Jewish girls in the Salonika mills, for example, worked until they married, as early as 16 17

F O 195/459, Holmes at Diyarbakir, 14 Apr. 1857.

CRUS, 26 May 1887. | e Germany, Reichsamt des Innern. Berichle iiber Handel und Industrie (Berlin: Carl Hermanns) I Heft 9, 10 Aug. 1907. i9 La revue, 31 mar. 1904. Lettre de Marache, 30 Mar. 1904. 20 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers (hereafter A&P), 1899, 103 , 6241, Sarell on Constantinople, 1893-97.

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age fifteen, or until they had accumulated the necessary dowry. 21 One mill, in the Yedikule district of Istanbul, employed some 300 women and children to make 500,000 packets of yarn per year. In the Adana region of southeast Anatolia, one mill with 2,700 spindles employed 300 women and children, who annually produced 1 million kilograms of yarn. A nearby mill employed 550 persons, usually children and women, who worked twelve hours a day. 22 Around 1880 one of the mills in (he European province of Salonika employed altogether 250 young women and 50 males. In the city of Salonika in the 1890s, mills employed 480 girls, twelve to eighteen years of age, and 160 men and boys. The men received two or three times the boys' wages, whereas girls' starting pay was half that of the boys. Approximately 75 percent of the 1,500 workers in the Macedonian spinning mills were females, usually girls, some as young as six years of age. In the 1890s they worked fifteen hours a day in summer and ten in winter, with a thirty-five-minute break for dinner but none at all for breakfast. Women working in inland mills, for example at Karaferia and Niausta, were in a worse position than their Salonika counterparts. In early-twentieth-century Salonika, the combination of a booming tobacco-processing industry that competed for relatively scarce labor and an active workers' movement escalated wages in the cotton mills. (Women also dominated the work force of die tobacco-processing factories.) But the inland mill workers had few wage-earning options. 23 The weaving of cloth by women also remained commonplace throughout the period, long after indigenous cloth manufacture supposedly had disappeared from the Ottoman lands. Around Bursa in the 1860s, "the peasantry find an economy in the women weaving at home stout articles for common wear." 24 At Trabzon, similarly, the "countrywomen" both worked in agriculture and spun woolen cloth for family members' outer garments. 25 At about this time, nearly 12,000 hand looms in the east Anatolian provinces of Diyarbakir and Erzurum employed that many men in addition to 6,000 youths under sixteen years of age. Two-diirds of these looms were used to weave cotton cloth and were located in die countryside, not in the towns. These rural weavers obtained the twist from women villagers, who in exchange received an equal weight in cloth. 26 We do not presently know the rural weaver's contribution to total family income, but 21 22

A & P , 1893-94, 5581. Salonica for 1891-92 (Blum, 30 Sept. 1893).

Austria-Hungary, Berichte der K. u. k. Österr.-Ung. Konsularämter über das Jahr 1901 (Vienna: Handelsmuseum) (hereafter KK), 1901, vol. 19, p. 1, and for 1902 and 1903; Ministère du Commerce, Rapports commerciaux des agents diplomatiques et consulaires de France (Paris, 1883-1914) (hereafter RCC). no. 109 (Mersin for 1892); Berichte, I, Heft 9, 20 Aug. 1907. 23 R C C , no. 76. reel 33. Salonique for 1900. reel 35. Salonique for 1902; Bulletin du Comité de l'Asie française, Salonique. 25 juillet 1883. See also A&P, 1893-94, 97, 5581, Salonica for 1891-92 (Blunt, 30 Sept. 1893), 1908, 7253, 17, Salonica for 1907, 7472, 103, Salonica for 1910; Berichte, XIX, Heft 6, 18 Apr. 1913; and KK, 1905, vol. 2, p. 6, Salonich. 24 F O 195/774, Sandison at Bursa. 28 May 1864. 25 A & P , 1878-79, Biliotti at Trabzon for 1877-78. 26 F O , Further Reports, 797

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Manufacturing

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only that other members of die family engaged in agriculture. In the towns of the region—Bitlis, Diyarbakir, Mardin, and Harput—the male weavers provided most of the family's cash and the wife earned about one-seventh of the total. 27 At the end of the century, "almost every family" in Asia Minor still owned a hand loom. "They can make their own cloths while vast numbers would be unable to earn the money with which to purchase foreign cloth." 28 This tenacious retention of looms well into the era of massive Ottoman imports of European cloth hints at the Ottoman household's flexible responses to changing market opportunities. In years of strong demand for agricultural products, the looms might be neglected, but in times of famine or weak demand for agricultural goods, cloth again might be made for the family or the market. Women in the province of Sivas in the 1890s used both locally spun and British yarn to weave a coarse cloth for men's trousers and other garments. These female weavers worked on as many as 10,000 looms in the province. In the district (kaza) of Davas in Aydin Province, about 185 looms were employed in weaving various cotton and linen textiles for sale, and girls and women operated a full three-quarters of them. 29 In the province as a whole, some 10,000 hand looms wove striped cloth (alaca) for home consumption and for sale. 3 0 These households simultaneously engaged in agriculture and manufacturing oriented toward the marketplace. Weaving output fluctuated with the harvest, another example of household labor ebbing and flowing with income opportunities and requirements, from agriculture to manufacturing and back again. During the 1870s rural artisans who manufactured goods for sale to their neighbors earned two-thirds of tlicir income from agricultural sources and one-third from handicraft activities. 31 As these examples demonstrate, female participation in the wage earning manufacturing labor force was predicated on very low wages. Late in the nine teen tli century, imported yarn created thousands of new jobs for women in the Istanbul area. Working at home in their newly found employment, these women used foreign yarn to crochet lace for export, earning piecework wages that were extremely low by Ottoman standards of the time, approximately 1.5 piasters per day. Similarly cheap female labor, earning no more than 1.5 piasters per day, permitted Ottoman hand-printed textiles to remain competitive with the mechanical imprints of European factories. 32 The significance of such wages can be illustrated if we assume that a family of six persons purchased all its bread

27

I b i d „ 795.

28

C R U S , reel T681, Jewett at Sivas, 30 June 1893.

29

Aydm (Hereafter VS) 1307/1891.

30

Berichte,

31 32

Bd. VII, Heft 4, 19 Juli 1904, 300; CRUS, reel T681, Jewett at Sivas, 26 May 1893.

F O Further Reports, 743.

Berichte, Bd VII, Heft 4, 19 Juli 1904, 274, 301, 306-8. See also A&P, 1878-79, Biliotti at Trabzon for 1877-78.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

needs. Around 1900 such a family would have required 35 to 40 piasters per week merely for its minimum bread requirements, exclusive of the monies needed for other foodstuffs; for housing, and for clothing. A lacemaker or a hand printer earned on the average 20 percent of the sum needed to keep the family just in bread. Put another way, each woman's wages provided the bread she needed to survive plus a fraction of the bread needed by one other member of her family. As an example outside of textiles, shoemaking in Istanbul demonstrates, together with Bursa silk reeling, that low wages were not confined to home industries and provides another indirect glimpse into the household division of labor. At the end of the century as many as fifty men and women labored together in shoemaking workshops. Male operators of sewing machines made half-shoes and earned up to 1.25 piasters per day. With an average urban family of five,1 if he worked seven days a week he could earn 25 percent of his family's weekly bread. The sewing machine operator's wife, if employed in the shop., would finish buttonholes or sew on buttons. But she earned, again assuming a seven-day work week, only 10 to 15 percent of the sum needed to buy the family's total bread. Labor from the children, which was quite common in nineteenth-century Ottoman manufacturing, clearly was necessary to meet the minimum subsistence requirements of the family. 33 Women also were actively involved in the famed mohair industry of Ankara, a participation that dated back to the mid-eighteenth century, when they spun the lower-quality grades, and probably earlier. In the 1830s and 1840s, the mohair-weaving guild, struggling to meet European competition, implemented what was hailed as an innovation in the industry. Previously the guild sheikh had bought raw mohair at Fixed prices and given it to the spinners (both female and male). But now the guild made contracts with "poor women" who bought mohair in the local markets, spun it, and then sold it to the guild for whatever price they could command. As die guild sought to compete with the "cheap price" of the European producers, the women supplemented rather than replaced the earlier method of obtaining yarn. 34 A free female labor force thus coexisted with the male spinning guild, a pattern also encountered in the Bursa silk indusry, as well as in furniture and shoemaking in Istanbul and textile production at Aleppo. Similarly, in the are;) of die southern Balkan mountains, male braidmakers

33

T h i s assumes a per capila consumption of 1.8 Ibs./0.83 kgs per day al an average price of 1.0 kuru$/okke of bread. Donald Quataert, "Limited Revolution: The Impact of the Anatolian Railway on Turkish Transport and the Provisioning of Istanbul, 1890-1908," Business History Review 51, no. 2 (1977): 139-60. Berichte, Bd. VII, Heft 4, 19 Juli 1904, 306-8. See, for example, Vs (Adana) 1318/1902, s. 188. 34

B B A Cevdet tklisal #52,6 Za 1241/July 1826, #31,3 B 1244/January 1829, #694,6 Za 1244/June 1829, BBA; Mesail-i miihimme Ankara eyaletine dair #2073, 1261/1845.

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belonged to the guild (gaitanci esnafi), but the women who spun the wool yarn for them did not. 35 The carpetmaking industry offers a good example of how the gender distribution of labor in a particular industry varied regionally. This variation indicates the absence of a uniform Middle Eastern or Islamic value system regarding the participation of women in the work force. In the Middle East generally the carpet industry boomed in the late nineteenth century. In western and central Anatolia, for example, soaring output after 1850 employed perhaps 60,000 persons by World War I, most of them girls and women. In certain areas of Anatolia, women historically had been engaged in all phases of carpetmaking—that is, in the spinning and dyeing of the wool and the knotting of the rugs. From Sivas in 1888 we have this description. The dy[e]ing, spinning, weaving etc are all conducted unitedly, the women of each family engaged in the business doing all the work from the spinning of the yarn by hand, dyeing it with vegetable dyes, to the weaving and completion of the carpet. 36 In this case a single (female) individual carried out all the steps involved in making a rug. But elsewhere divisions of labor were common and apparently were proportionate to an area's involvement in commercial carpet production. In the late nineteenth century, for example, men at the great production center of U§ak washed and bleached die wool and women spun it into yarn. This division of labor changed in the final three decades of the nineteenth century as the production of rugs tripled but the number of carpet looms only doubled. To accomplish this feat, U§ak nigmaking families rearranged their lives so that the women could spend more time at the looms: for a brief period in the late 1890s, U§ak men took over the task of spinning the wool yarn. Steam-powered spinning factories then were built in the town. Similarly, in one area of modern Iran, as women's commercial rug knotting became more valuable, men assumed such traditionally female tasks as carrying water. (In this case, there was no accompanying ideological shift in gender roles.) 37 At U§ak, the division of labor changed in other ways as well: the early-nineteenth-century practice of women dyeing die yarn had given way to male dyeing by the 1880s. But at the important export center of nearby Kula, different divisions of labor prevailed. There women continued to dye the yarn until the century's end. Again, by way of contrast, men as well as women knotted commercial carpets at Gordes and Kula. In Qajar Iran during the same era tribal males usually did not work in carpet knotting but the 35

N i k o l a i Todorov, The Balkan City, 1500-1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, ¡983), 228; Saiaheddin Bey, La Turquie à l'exposition universelle 1867 (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1867), 129; Michael R. Palairet, "The Decline of the Old Balkan Woolen Industries, c. 18701914,".Vierteljährschrift für Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 70 (1983): 331-62. 36 C R U S , reel T681, Jewett at Sivas, 22 July 1888. 37 Nikki Keddie to author, 4 Oct. 1988.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

women did. In some areas of Iran at this time, however, men played an active role in the industry. At Meshed and other major urban centers, males regularly worked as rug knotters; in cities such as Tabriz they worked together with women on the same looms. But in other Iranian cities, such as Kerman, only women knotted.38 These examples demonstrate the absence of clear-cut patterns of gender division of labor in nineteenth-century Middle Eastern manufacturing, at least in rugmaking. Ottoman (and Qajar) men and women readily interchanged productive roles to maintain family livelihoods. The presence of male and female rug knotters at Kula and Gordes and in several cities of Qajar Iran reflects a gender sharing of Middle Eastern jobs that popular stereotypes hold to the monopoly of women. These Anatolian and Iranian examples also show that the division was not characterized by male domination of those activities that were heavily committed to market production; in all the highly commercialized production centers, both males and females knotted rugs. The presence of male and female workers in the shoemaking shops of Istanbul, for its part, seems to suggest art easier set of gender relations than stereotypes would permit. In these situations the rigid barriers that are presumed to have existed between the sexes and in the gender division of labor simply were not present. That is, our assumptions about such divisions are incorrect, at least some of the time. But the patterns of gender sharing in caipetmaking tasks at U§ak and other long-established commercially oriented production centers were not universal in the industry. As Western demand for carpets mounted, Izmir and Istanbul merchants established new workshops in many regions. Similarly, a European merchant founded a new knotting center in 1912 in the Iranian town of Hamadan. Only girls and women knotted at these workshops, where unlike in the traditional centers they worked away from the home. 39 Thus in the late nineteenth century tens of thousands of girls and women were employed outside the home for die first time. Again, we have no data on consequent changes in the status of the female workers within the family or on the distribution of domestic and agricultural tasks within the household. We do not know the causes of this exclusion of male knotters from the workshops founded in late-nineteenth-century Anatolia (and at Hamadan). Whether it resulted from the decisions of the families or of the West European merchants who organized the workshops is uncertain. The contemporary

3i

Ufak il yilhgt (Istanbul, 1968), 2 6 9 ; A . Cecil Edwards, The Persian Carpel: A Survey of the Carpet-Making Industry of Persia ( L o n d o n : G. D u c k w o r t h , 1 9 5 3 ) , 2 8 , 5 9 - 6 0 , 2 0 1 . Further east, in the m i d - t w e n t i e t h c e m u r y , Indian m e n a l s o w e r e c o m m o n l y e m p l o y e d as knotters of c o m m e r c i a l l y made rugs. 3Q For a fuller account o i the carpet industry, s e e D o n a l d Quataert, "Machine Breaking and the C h a n g i n g Carpel Industry of W e s t e r n A n a t o l i a , 1 8 6 0 - 1 9 0 8 , " Journal of Social History 11 (Spring 1986): 4 7 3 - 8 9 , and w u r c e s (herein; and Edwards, Persian Carpet, 9 0 - 9 1 .

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rugmaking industry of the late twentieth century is significant in this context. One of the largest firms presently organizing the hand knotting of rugs in the Middle and Far East employs female knotters at one location, males at another, and females at yet a third. To this company, gender is irrelevant; clearly, the firm has adjusted to prevailing local practices that make both groups available for knotting rugs. The nineteendi-century growth in the three most important export industries—silk reeling, lacemaking, and carpetmaking—was fueled by European demand and, it seems important to repeat, sustained by a work force that was overwhelmingly female and poorly paid. In the textile industries generally, men previously had formed the vast majority of the urban guild weavers. As European competition mounted, these men continued to weave, but for declining wages, contributing relatively less to overall family income through dieir manufacturing tasks. In many of the industries that were either newly born, or expanding, or successfully adapting to changing conditions, female labor was dominant. This was true of the hand-spun yarn produced in the home and the machine-made yarn produced in factories, of carpet, lace, and raw silk production, and of linen and silk weaving in some areas. The importation of foreign yarn, for its part, relieved many women of spinning tasks and freed them to use this newly available time in more lucrative forms of manufacturing activity. But men as well as women wove, both for the market and for subsistence needs. The situations examined here seem to support several conclusions concerning Ottoman women, households, and manufacturing. First, as should be obvious by now, women played an integral role in the textile-manufacturing life of the Ottoman Empire, both in the home and in the workshop. Many worked outside the home—Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Ottoman women and girls alike. Certainly iliis changes our view of day-to-day life in the Ottoman Empire. But does it not also speak to die issue of industrialization itself? Most of the activities recorded here took place not in mechanized factories but rather in small workshops and in households. By tracing women's work back into their homes, we have discovered a universe of manufacturing activity that simply is lost when the focus is on the factory. At the same time, by seeing the (apparendy) rising incidence of women's work outside the home, we begin to understand more clearly the magnitude of die nineteenth-century changes. That female labor occupied die very bottom of the wage scale, receiving fractions of their male counterparts' pay, hardly was coincidental. From the poor wages they received we must conclude that women's work was considered supplementary and nonprofessional. But this work was absolutely essential to the survival of the Ottoman textile industries in die nineteenth century, when costs and prices fell steadily. Western market demands may have enhanced the economic importance of the female members of Ottoman households engaged in manufacturing.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Finally, many nineteenth-century Ottoman households demonstrated considerable flexibility in the gender division of labor. In several respects, the conclusions of this chapter have been corroborated by ethnographic research in the modem-day Middle East A number of recent studies unambiguously demonstrate the vital importance of female labor in the economic survival of the contemporary Turkish village household and so make important links with the Ottoman past. Several of these studies, however, did not find the gender sharing of jobs that seems to have been common in the nineteenth century. Research focusing on villages in the Konya region of central Anatolia, for example, reveals no such sharing today. In general, this group of scholars argues that tasks are rigidly defined as male or female. Further, they observe that when women assume new manufacturing responsibilities, men not only allow them to work harder and longer than before but also refuse to assume any additional tasks at home. Nor do these researchers find any enhanced power or status within the household resulting from the increased wage work of modern Turkish women. 40 These conclusions, however, are flatly contradicted by another researcher working on carpetmakers near Ayvalik, in western Anatolia. These workers became involved in carpet production quite recently, as part of a Turkish university's effort to restore the use of natural dyestuffs in the industry. The women and men freely interchange carpetmaking and household-maintenance tasks. 41 Thus places that are physically near to one another differ fundamentally in the gender divison of labor. The difference simply may be a matter of variation by location, a phenomenon encountered often enough in the research presented here. Or perhaps ideology is shaping what researchers observe in the contemporary work sites and households. That is, the respective researchers find the gender sharing or gender division of work tasks that they are looking for. The role of the historical past in transforming the status of contemporary manufacturing women remains uncertain. Is there more or less gender sharing of manufacturing tasks in the Middle East of the 1980s than during the preceding century? The question posed is difficult to address using the historical sources. What was the impact of rising nineteenth-century manufacturing for the marketplace on die status of wage-earning Middle Eastern women and on tlieir

4

®Gunseli Berik, "From Enemy of the Spoon' to Factory: Women's Labor in the Carpet Weaving Industry in Rural Turkey" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, New Orleans, La., 22-26 Nov. 1985); Berik, "Invisible Carpet Weavers: Women's Income Contribution in Rural Turkey," Nilufer Isvan-Hayat, "Rural Household Production and the Sexual Division of Labor: A Research Framework," and E. Mine (,'inar, "Disguised Employment—The Case of Female Family Labor in Agriculture and Small Scale Manufacturing in Developing Countries; the Case of Turkey" (papers presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Boston, 20-23 Nov. 1986). " " Josephine Powell, "The Role of Women" (paper presented at a symposium on village life and village rugs in modern Turkey, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 1987). Similarly, there is considerable disagreement among European historians concerning gender roles in rural manufacturing. See the works by Gay Gullikson, Hans Medick, and Jean Quataert.

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family relationships? Did it spark a social reaction whereby men perversely imposed tighter social controls over women whose economic importance was being enhanced? We should expect to see considerable change in the role and status of these manufacturing women over time. After all, during the 1980s the popular classes veiled and secluded women much more than formerly. But whether such trends produced a stricter gender division of labor has not been determined.

THE SILK INDUSTRY OF BURSA 1880-1914*

The Ottoman Empire, along with other non-Western areas, confronted the problem of economic survival in the 19th century era of European industrialization. European capital and manufactures intruded everywhere, destroying the old while creating new marketing patterns, formed economic and financial satellites and, in the process, disrupted existing equilibriums. While the Ottoman state participated in the vast expansion of world trade, increasing its commerce sixteen fold between 1850 and 1914, the trade relationship generally was unfavorable. The decay in Ottoman industry continued and, at the end of the century, agricultural commodities from a growing market sector comprised at least three-quarters of exports. Ottoman subjects supplied raw materials to the industrial nations and purchased from them processed foodstuffs (e.g. flour and sugar) and manufactured goods (notably textiles). Within the empire, the Western presence grew larger as foreign capital built railroads, harborworks, tramways and factories and as European merchants travelled in once-remote regions. By 1914, private foreign investment had reached approximately 66 million pounds sterling. Ottoman finances concomitantly fell under increasing European control. Once-novel foreign loans became a common Ottoman method of meeting fiscal needs in the third quarter of the century and, by 1914, the outstanding debt totalled some 150 million liras. As World War I approached, the Ottoman Empire assumed the character of a European economic appendage, bound to Western consumer needs and investment capital for its economic existence. The adjustments involved in this basic transformation of the Ottoman economy and their effects on the different business sectors of the empire are

I gratefully acknowledge that the research here reported, completed in 1977, was assisted by grants awarded by the Foreign Area Fellowship Program (1970-1971) and the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Research Council (1975). My thanks to the staffs of the Bajbakanlik Arjivi (Istanbul) and the Zentrales Staatsarchiv (Potsdam) for their cooperation and assistance.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

relatively unknown. The broad outlines of economic change are beginning to emerge in the literature but little research has been done on specific commodities, types of agriculture, product changes in response to foreign demand, and the role of foreign capital in the different sectors. Furthermore, the composition of the entrepreneurial class involved in the transformation has been noted but not traced in detail. Another void in our knowledge concerns labor conditions. The present study seeks to examine the altered economic structure and its effects on a single sector, the Bursa silk industry. It discusses changes in silk output, describes the foreign and indigenous elements involved in those changes, and examines working conditions. The case of the Bursa silk industry, with its extraordinary export orientation, an unusually high growth rate, and almost complete collapse in the 1914-1923 period, is probably not typical. Yet, an extreme case often offers more insight than a «typical» experience — and the parameters of typical cases are as yet unknown. Besides, the investigation of one industry hopefully will furnish a basis for similar studies which should improve our understanding of structural economic changes in the late period of the Ottoman Empire. The city of Bursa, with a late 19th century population of approximately 90,000, is situated within easy reach of sea transport, some 42 kilometers from the Sea of Marmara. The relationship between this ancient city (Prusa) and silk reached back into the Byzantine epoch and continued, with varying fortunes, throughout Ottoman times. The prosperity of Bursa for centuries rested upon its silk cloth manufacture, die object of sales to Ottoman and European consumers. By the mid-19tli century, however, French and Italian competitors, as well as taste changes, stripped Bursa of its foreign outlets: Ottomans but few others purchased the finished silk goods manufactured in the city.1 In response, the industry turned to producing the basic raw materials utilised in silk weaving — silkworm eggs, cocoons, and raw silk — for shipment to European weaving facilities.

' F o r Bursa silk in the early Ottoman period see Halil tnalcik, «Caital Formation in the Ottoman Empire», Journal of Economic History, 29. 1969, pp. 97-140 and, by the same author, «Bursa and the Commerce of the Levant». Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient, III, # 2 1960, pp. 131-147. Also, Fahri Dalsar, Türk sanayi ve ticaret tarihinde Bursa'da ipekfilik, Istanbul, 1960. Brief overviews in Halil Inalcik, «Bursa», Encyclopedia of Islam, I, 2nd ed., Leiden, 1960. pp. 1333-1336. tnalcik, «Harir», Encyclopedia of Islam. Ill, 2nd ed. Leiden, 1971, pp. 211-218; and Besim Darkot, «Bursa», islam Ansiklopedisi, II, Istanbul, 1961, pp. 806-810. Leila Erder, «Factory Districts in Bursa during the 1860s», Middle East Technical University, Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, Vol. 1, # 1, Spring, 1975, pp. 85-99 for a more recent account. Reinhard Stewig, Bursa, Nordwestanatolien. Strukturwandel einer orientalischen Stadl unter dem Einfluss der Industrialisierung, Kiel, 1970. for a study of modern Bursa.

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FIGURE I Stages in Silk

Production

e^gs

silkworms

I

cocoons

I

raw silk (reeled silk)

I

silk cloth (woven silk)

Technological improvements introduced into the reeling but not the weaving segment of the industry dramatized this shift from finished to primary commodity production. Whereas steam-powered weaving establishments were lacking until 1908, steam-powered reeling mills at Bursa dated from the 1830s and became widespread in subsequent decades.2 In their new capacity as primary producers, Bursa silk raisers experienced prosperity during the early 1850s, based largely on the misfortunes of France. Pebrine, a disease which caused sterile silkworms or weak offspring, appeared in the French silkraising districts and devastated their production. French cocoon production plummeted from 26 to 8 million kgs. between 1853 and 1856. 3 The reduced supply relative to demand pushed egg, cocoon and raw silk prices to unprecedented heights; French silkraisers turned to foreign, uninfected sources, including Bursa. With the active encouragement of French merchants, large landholders in the Bursa area planted new tracts of mulberry orchards while local egg raisers increased the volume of eggs sent into incubation. Production of the valuable white cocoon mounted and reached perhaps four million kgs. in the mid 1850s while raw silk production totalled c. 600,000 kgs. 4 The prosperity of Bursa, however, already was challenged with the opening of the Chinese trade during the 1840s and 1850s and the slightly later (1857) initiation of silk exports from Japan. Concomitantly, pebrine radiated outward from France and reached Turkey in 1857. Within a decade, raw silk production fell by two thirds, to 192,440 kgs 5 . Difficulties increased in 1869

^Turkey, Ticaret ve Ziraat Nezareti, Sanayi istatistiki, 1329, 1331, Istanbul, 1333/1917, p. 125 (hereafter sanayi 1917). A. Gündüz Ôkçûn, Osmanh sanayii: 1913, 1915 yillan sanayi istatistiki, Ankara, 1970 (hereafter sanayi 1970), p. 161, is a modern Turkish transliteration with some changes, of the Ottoman survey. 3 «Silk», Encyclopedia Britannica, XXII, 9th ed., 1895, p. 59. 4 Turkey, Ministry of Agriculture, Türk ziraat tariliine bir bakif (hereafter bakif). Istanbul, 1938 p. 188. "Ibid., F. Dalsar, pp. 418, 240. Andreas D. Mordtmann, Anatolien: Skizzen und Reisebriefe aus Kleinasien (1850-1859), ed. Franz Babinger, Hannover, 1925, p. 353.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

when the newly-opened Suez Canal facilitated a flood of Oriental silk into European markets. After the collapse brought on by pebrine and the competition of the Far East, Bursa production and exports continued their downward slide. In the early 1880s, total Turkish silk production barely averaged 150,000 kgs. per year; silk exports in 1885 were valued at less than half the already depressed 1872 levels. Overall, as measured by weight, cocoon production in Bursa province reportedly fell some 80 per cent between the boom of the 1850s and 18816. During these decades of decline, the Ottoman government unsuccessfully intervened to save the industry by offering incentives such as tithe exemptions to those willing to continue or undertake silk raising. 7 A solution to the pebrine problem appeared to be at hand in 1865 when Louis Pasteur devised a simple yet effective technique for controlling the disease. His method involved micrographic examination of tlie chrysalides and moths and a painstaking selection "of diseasefree breeding stock. Using these procedures, silkraisers slowly could obtain healthy specimens for future breeding. While some French silkgrowers, unwilling or unable to bear the necessary costs, resisted Pasteur's techniques, most breeders in that country and in Italy adopted the practice and began producing a healthy breeding stock. Bursa residents recognized the opportunity and, in the 1860s and 1870s, imported these eggs at a cost of three million francs per year 8 — a raw materials exporter temporarily importing in an effort to resume its former role. Despite initial successes, some Bursa raisers, tempted by the high profits, engaged in fraudulent practices which resulted in diseased eggs and inferior raw silk. Also, committees formed to inspect imported eggs permitted the entry of diseased specimens; alternatively, committee members prevented competitors from obtaining healthy eggs. Although some silkraisers and merchants went to France, studied the Pasteur method, and implemented it at Bursa, their efforts could not overcome corruption, indifference, and lack of capital.9 Silkraising at Bursa appeared doomed. Beginning in the late 1880s, market condition, foreign capital, and entrepreneurs favorably intersected to produce a fascinating reversal of silk production trends. Rapid growth continued unchecked until the eve of World War I. Fresh cocoon production nearly tripled: volume rose from an annual average of 2.5 million kgs. in the 1880s to over seven milion kgs. during the first decade of the 20th century while the sparse data indicate that the value of cocoons more than-doubled in a decade (Table 1). The amount of locally-produced silkworm ® Journal de ta Chambre de Commerce de Constantinople (thereafter JCCQ. 2 August 1885 and 12 March 1887, p. 62. Charles Morawitz, Les finances de la Turquie, Paris, 1902, p. 219. 7

Bakip. 137 and Turkey. Ministry of Justice, Düsiur, birinci tertib, II, Istanbul. 1289/1872, p. 438. Also Ba$bakanlik Arçivi, Istanbul (hereafter BBA). Meclis-i Vaia 1279 (1862), 21304: JCCC, 21 May 1887, p. 122. ^JCCC, 11 May 1885: Vita] Cuinet, IM Turquie d'Asie: Géographie administrative, statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l'Asie Mineure, IV, Paris, 1894, p. 59. 9 JCCC 2 March 1887, p. 58 and 11 May 1885: V. Cuinet, IV. pp. 59-60 and Morawitz, p. 319.

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eggs annually sent into incubation increased from 47,000 ounces in the late 1880s to 190,000 ounces between 1902 and 1905. Reciprocally, the incubation of imported eggs fell from an annual average of 59,000 ounces to less than 1,000 ounces (Table 2). Unable to satisfy local demand for silkworm eggs in the 1880s, Bursa, after 1900, annually exported over 400,000 ounces, primarily to Russia and Persia. 10 And finally, annual raw silk production levels probably approached 700,000 kgs. just prior to World War I (Table 3). All statistical indicators note a new phase of prosperity for the industry beginning in the late 1880s. Market conditions played a role in the turnaround. From the 1860s existed an apparently insatiable global demand for raw silk which producers were hard pressed to meet. The United States, as the volume of its raw silk imports rose four-fold between the 1870s and World War I, became the largest consumer of silk: with the impetus of American demand, the Japanese government and private silkraisers almost quadrupled raw silk production between 1868 and 1893, then tripled it again before 1914." On a global scale, the continuing rise in demand for raw silk doubled world raw silk production between 1880 and 1900; by 1912, it nearly had doubled again, to some 27 million kgs. Within the context of American-Japanese domination, Bursa played a minor role, producing perhaps three percent of global raw silk output. 12 Vital to Bursa were the needs of France, die second largest consumer of raw silk after the United States. The pebrine onslaught permanently reduced French raw silk production levels. Between the 1850s and 1914, local sources provided French industries with only one-seventh of their total needs: at the turn of the century, for example, France produced less than 600,000 kgs. of raw silk while the French silk cloth industry required c. four million kgs. Bursa enjoyed a virtually guaranteed market and sold at least 80 per cent of its total production to France to help fill the gap. 14

du Velay, Essai sur l'histoire financière de la Turquie depuis le règne du Sultan Mahmoud II jusqu'à nos jours. Paris. 1903. p. 499. B. Darkot. pp. 808-809. states that Turkey exported one million ounces after 1900. Proceeds from the silk tithe (Table 4) can be used to measure changes in the value of silk production. Improvements in tithe collection efficiency, however, account for at least some of the increase, particularly in the 1880s. After that date, standards of collection efficiency were uniform. 11 United States, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957, Washington, 1960, pp. 548-549: William W. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, expanded edition, Princeton, N.J., 1970, pp. 16, 113; F. Dalsar, p. 446. 12 United States. Department of State, Consular Reports (hereafter USCR) 1901, LXV, # 244, pp. 311 and 1902. LXVIII, # 256, p. 344; «Silk», Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th ed., 1926. New Vol, III, 548; The Manchester Guardian Commercial, special supplement, «European Textiles». December 10, 1925, p. 42; F. Dalsar, p. 473. 13 USCR, 1900, LXII, #232, p. 78; ibid., 1902, LXVIII, #256, p. 344. In the 20th century. Bursa surpassed France in raw silk output.

'4Revue commerciale du Levant. Bulletin mensuel de la Chambre de Commerce française de Constantinople (hereafter Revue), 31 May 1907, p. 846; Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam, Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter ZStA, AA), Nr. 53736, Bl. 107.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Market demand, however, does not account fully for the growth of the Bursa silk industry. In (his regard, the history of silk production in Persia is relevant. Persia, another long-time silk supplier, also had suffered from the onslaught of pebrine. Despite the favorable market conditions outlined above, the Persian silk industry failed to recover; its production in 1909 was only half the 1850 levels. 15 Thus, the response to market conditions in the Bursa industry differed sharply from that of Persia. What factors in the local Ottoman environment might help explain the difference? In 1881, six years after extensive borrowing had engendered the financial collapse of the Ottoman government, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration was formed by European bondholders of the huge Ottoman debt. To repay its loans, the Istanbul regime "absolutely and irrevocably" ceded to the European consortium a variety of important revenues: whole sectors of the Ottoman economy were alienated from the government and functioned under direct European financial control. By 1914, revenues ceded to the organization exceeded four million liras and comprised 15 per cent of all Ottoman tax revenues. In addition, the Debt Administration, as agent for the Istanbul regime, collected other revenues to service new loans and railroad construction. The consortium functioned as the singlemost visible symbol of European economic control in the Ottoman Empire. Among the revenues ceded to the Debt Administration were the silk tithes of Bursa province and other regions. 16 These tithes provided a minor if rising proportion (perhaps, ultimately, six percent) of the total ceded revenues. Bursa province and the district (sancak) of Izmir accounted for some nine-tenlhs of the silk tithes collected and were die objects of most Debt Administration efforts to promote silk production 17 For several years the organization tightened silk tithe collection procedures but adopted no direct measures to increase revenues by developing the industry. The Sultan, for his part, ordered that means be found to raise silk tithe proceeds and asked silk merchants for recommendations.18 The passive posture of the Debt Administration came to an end in late 1886 or early 1887 with the intervention of Hermann Scholer, German ViceConsul in Bursa since 1881 and a silk merchant residing in the city. Scholer's

15 I n 1850, Persia produced one million kgs. of raw silk: in 1865, c. 280,000 kgs and, in 1909, 550,000 kgs. F. Lafont and H.-L. Rabino, L'industrie séricicole en Perse Montpellier 1910, pp. 12-13, 44 and table on pp. 128-129. 16 Article Eight of the Decree of Muharrem. 8 December 1881; Donald C. Blaisdell, European Control in the Ottoman Empire: A Study of the Establishment, Activities, and Significance of the Ottoman Public Debt, New York, 1929, is still a valuable analysis of the organization. 17 L'Administration de la Dette Publique Ottomane. Compte rendu du conseil d'administration foi the years 1882-1886 and 1893-1911. Istanbul, 1888-1912. 18 Hiidavendigâr Vilâyeti Salnamesi (hereafter Bursa VS) 1325 (1907), pp 261, 268: V. Cuinet, IV, 60; and sources cited in n. 16 and 17.

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103

rather dubious reputation, spotted with allegations of fraud and questionable business practices, did not close the ears of the Debt Administration to his proposal that the industry be revived through adoption of the Pasteur technique. Although Scholer apparently had himself in mind for directorship of such a program, the Debt Administration instead asked Pasteur for recommendations.19 Pasteur referred the organization to the head of the Sericulture Station at Montpellier who in turn recommended Kevork Torkomyan. Torkomyan, an Ottoman Armenian, had been sent abroad by his government to study agronomy, had graduated from the Montpellier Agricultural School in 1883, and subsequently had been employed on the imperial estates. He conditioned his acceptance of the offer upon the establishment of a silk station at Bursa for the dual purpose of educating egg raisers and disseminating proper silkworm breeding practices. In January, 1888, through the intervention of high Debt Administration officials, the Sultan approved Torkomyan's appointment and two weeks later consented to the foundation of the silk station.20 These measures inaugurated the revival of Bursa silk production. Other programs followed in rapid succession. In 1891, the Debt Administration began sponsoring silkraising competitions at Bursa as a means of upgrading production standards. Similar competitions, in which winners received valuable microscopes and cash awards, later were held annually in the nearby silk towns of Bilecik and Izmit. 21 To protect the local raisers, the Debt Administration, in 1891, instigated the imposition of import duties on silkworm eggs entering Turkey. 22 Hie government also became more actively involved and granted a three year tithe exemption for all newlyestablished mulberry orchards in the province of Bursa; three years later, it exempted Bursa silkworm raisers from the profit tax (lemettii vergisi).23 In addition, die government established a model silkworm nursery at its School for Practical Agriculture in Bursa, perhaps with Debt Administration financial assistance. 24 Finally, and of vital importance to the future of silk production, the Debt Administration and the government co-sponsored the establishment of mulberry plantations from which saplings, some 60 million between 1890 and

19 Bursa VS. 1325 (1907), p. 261: V. Cuinei, IV. 59-61; ZStA.AA. Nr. 15073, Bl. 70-72, 86-87r. 98, 112-114, 116-117, 119-120 and Nr. 52364. Bl. 70-122. Scholer's recommendations may have stemmed from the 1881 request of the Sultan. 20 Kirkor Komiircan Tiirkiye imparatorluk devii dif borflar tarih;.esi, Istanbul, 1948, pp 75-76, V. Cuinet, IV. 61: Bursa VS 1325 (1907), pp. 262-263. JCCC, 24 December 1887, p. 334. 1X DUstur, birinci tertib, VI (Ankara, 1939), 755-757 and 1206-1208; ibid., VII (Ankara, 1941), 1027-1028. Also JCCC, 4 March 1893, pp. 103-104: V. Cuinet, IV, pp. 45-65. Morawitz p V 321.

22 JCCC. 30 June 1894, pp. 301-303. This imposition of an import duty, in the era of capitulatory treaties and the Ottoman inability to unilaterally alter tariff schedules, suggests the international influence of the Debt Administration. 23 JCCC, 30 April 1892 and 30 November 1895, p. 569: BBA Orman 1318 (1900) §aban # 1: see n. 7 for precedents. 24

B u r s a VS 1324 (1906), p. 597: JCCC, 18 March 1899 and 17 June 1899.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

1910, were distributed without charge to cultivators near Bursa and in various other parts of the empire 2 5 Occasionally, the Istanbul regime moved beyond Debt Administration initiatives. In 1899, for example, when the foreign consortium failed to deliver the promised number of mulberry bushes, the government provided funds to purchase one-half million plants from Bursa nurseries and sent them to waiting cultivators. 26 More generally, however, the government, unwilling to commit its limited fiscal resources to a sector from which it derived little immediate benefit, followed the lead of the Debt Administration. To cite one example: in 1895, the Finance Ministry (Maliye Nezareti), over the objections of government agricultural specialists, withdrew from a previously favored scheme to cofinance the formation of silkraising institutes at other silk centres and indicated tliat the Debt Administration could fund the project alone. 27 Foreign groups provided most of die techniques, capital, and supportive milieu necessary to defeat pebrine and revitalise die industry. A major force in the victory over disease and decline was the Silkraising Institute (Institut Sericicole/Harir Darriita'limi), founded on the advice of Scholer and Torkomyan and financed by the Debt Administration. Over the course of Torkomyan's three decade-long career at the institute, some 2,032 persons received training in Pasteur practices28, a cadre which deserves much of the credit for the revival of the silk industry. The Institute opened its doors in 1888/1304 with an initial class of 12 students and, in early 1894, moved to larger, permanent quarters. 29 Torkomyan was aided in his teaching duties by Scholer and, after 1895, by Yervant Beyazyan, another Ottoman Armenian sent to France for agricultural education. 30 The Institute offered two programs of instruction in Pasteur practices. The first, for full-time students, involved a two year curriculum and culminated in an examination before Torkomyan and government agronomists. The second program provided instruction and certificates to those who enrolled in part-time studies and subsequently were tested in Pasteur methods, lhe attrition rate among candidates suggests standards

25

B B A , Orman 1319 (1902) ZMucce # UCCC, 1 April 1S99; 22 April 1899; 30 March 1901, p. 101 and 5 April 1902, p. 108 Vincent Caillard, «Turkey», Encyclopedia Britannica, XXV11 11th ed., 1911, 437; du Velay, pp. 497-499. 26 B B A , Orman 1316 (1899) Zillucce # 2. 27 / C C C , 30 September 189}, p. 463; 28 July 1894, p. 350: 15 August 1894, p. 399; 20 October 1894, p. 495 and 9 February 1895, p. 64. 28 F . Dalsar, p. 429: K. Komurcan, pp. 75-76. 29 B u r s a VS, 1325 (1907), pp. 261-263; Bursa VS, 1324 (1906), p. 597; JCCC, 12 August 1893 p. 379 and 19 May 1894, p. 234. 30

B B A Orman 1312 (1898) J o w l #3: Bursa VS enumerate the Institute staff, for example, 1324 (1906), p. 269.

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were high. Some two-thirds of the full-time students taking the examination passed and received the necessary approval.31 In the Bursa area, silkworm eggs were raised not only in nurseries specifically erected for that purpose but also in homes and cottages as well. In the former case, the eggs were sold to silkworm raisers who tended them until the caterpillars had spun their cocoons. Silkworm raisers purchasing eggs often lacked the necessary capital for immediate payment and engaged in sharecropping. In some towns and villages around Bursa, one-sixth to one-half of the total cocoon production was turned over to the egg supplier in payment for the eggs. In another case, where a Bursa firm had set up a branch in central Anatolia, onetenth of the cocoon production was paid to the supplier of eggs. Sharecropping and domestic industry were practiced throughout the era of Debt Administration control. 32 When the larvae hatched, it was usual for the women in the family to gather the mulberry branches and assume responsibility for raising the silkworms. 33 At the time, the predominance of women in silkworm raising was explained by the following tale, printed in a government publication. A bachelor was using 620 grams of eggs to produce a certain amount of cocoons—and die amount was decreasing. After he married, his wife volunteered to take over the work. Secretly, she used only 128 grams of eggs. The hushand discovered this and lamented his imminent doom since she, using about one-fifth the eggs he had, surely would produce only one-fifth the cocoons. She retorted with the promise to sell her trousseau to recoup the husband's losses if she didn't obtain at least tlie same volume of cocoons. In the end, of course, her production from 128 grams of eggs exceeded her husband's yield from 620 grams. 34 This story, which neatly justifies women's leading role in terms of greater skills, obscures the actual reason. Silkraising families engaged primarily in growing food crops for their livelihood. The income from silkraising was supplemental in nature, a secondary activity requiring most attention in the off-peak agricultural seasons. Not their higher skill levels, but the quality of women as extra-income producers seems the more satisfactory explanation for female control of silkraising in Turkey. 35 Bursa VS, 1317 (1899), p. 331: ibid., 1318 (1900), p. 92; ibid., 1325 (1907), p. 262; du Velay, 497; HUdavendigär, 26 RebiyUlevvel 1312 (27 September 1894), p. 1 and 3 Rebiyülähir 1312 (4 October 1894), p. 3; JCCC and Bursa VS sources cited in n. 39. 32 ZStA.AA. Nr. 53735, Bl. 41-42r; Nr. 15073, Bl. 116-117; Nr. 53738, Bl. 16; Paul Fesch. Constantinople aux demiers jours d'Abdul-Hamid, Paris, 1907, pp. 571-572, Cuinet, IV. pp. 326327, indicates that, exclusive of egg raising in individual homes, there were 31 nurseries for the purpose in the district (sancak) of Bursa. 33 Lucy M. J. Garnett The Women of Turkey and their Folk-lore. London, 1893, pp. 58-59, 214215, also pp. 44, 213, 346. ZStA.AA, Nr. 8729, Bl. 119. Mordtmann, pp. 289-290, however, states that men. women, and children were active in silkraising in some Greek villages. 34 Quoted in F. Dalsar, pp. 406-407. 35 F o r the role of women in Japanese silkraising see W.W. Lockwood, pp. 45, 27-30.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

The productivity of Bursa egg and cocoon raisers compared favorably with that of other areas, both elsewhere in Anatolia and abroad. In the late 1890s, silk producing countries globally averaged 39 legs, of fresh cocoons per ounce (of 25 grams) of egg while, for example, Diyarbakir producers obtained 20-28 kgs. per ounce. Areas around Bursa often averaged 45 kgs. per ounce of seed and yields of better than 100 kgs. were recorded in several of the silkraising competitions.36 When the cocoon had been formed, the silkraiser's work was completed (unless (s)he reeled the silk at home). Debt Administration inspectors, aided by government officials, then registered the amount of the crop for tithing purposes The fresh cocoon raiser could sell freely but always under the supervision of these authorities.37 By overseeing the production and sale of eggs and cocoons, the Debt Administration sought to protect the quality of its revenue source and assure full payment of taxes. Other controls were imposed over the industry. In October 1893, the Ottoman government passed into law an important proposal sponsored by the Debt Administration. This piece of legislation specified that only individuals possessing a certificate or diploma from the Bursa Silkraising Institute or its foreign equivalent could engage in the sale or production of silkworm eggs and cocoons. 38 In effect, the regulation restricted eggs and cocoon raising to Institute beneficiaries. Lists of the diploma and certificate recipients were published periodically, announcing the competence of those who had acquired the exclusive legal right to engage in silkraising. These lists provide a means of determining the identity of innovators who took advantage of the opportunity provided by the foreign capital and spearheaded the technical changes in the egg and cocoon phases of silk production. Between 1888 and 1905, 1,234 persons from the Ottoman Empire attended the Institute and obtained certificates or diplomas; of these, 72.9 per cent were from the Bursa area. 39 Among the Bursa silkraisers, 73.3 per cent were of

36

Revue, May 1908, p. 834: p. 834, USCR, 1900, LXII, # 232, p. 77; Zentrales Staatsarchiv, His. Abt. II. Merseburg. Rep. 120C Tit. VI. II. Nr. 74, Bd. I. Bl. 263-264. JCCC, 9 November 1895, p. 536 and 5 November 1898, p. 350, list the names of those receiving awards; Mesdames Varik Papazyan and Repega were among the winners in the October, 1898 competition. Members of the minority populations won 59 per cent of the awards granted in two competitions. The practice of double-cropping so successfully introduced in Japan was not implemented in Turkey, another suggestion that silkraising at Bursa was a secondary activity for many cultivators. 37

38

D U V e l a y , pp. 4 9 9 - 5 0 0 .

DUsiur, birinci tertib, VI, 1433-1435, gives the text of the law, dated 8 Rebiyulahir 1311 (19 October 1893). For the text of four amendments, in 1902 and 1906, see Diislur, birinci tertib, VII, 854-857, and VIII, Ankara, 1943, pp. 556-559. 559-562. Also, Ch. Morawitz, p. 320 and V. Cuinet, IV, p. 63. 30 Bursa-area residents' share of the total number of graduates and certificate holders derived from Bursa VS, 1325 (1907), pp. 263-265. The balance of the students came from other areas cf Anatolia (15%), European Turkey (10%), and the Arab provinces (2%). Composition of Bursaarea residents derived from lists of graduates, 1893-1898, and certificate recipients in 1894 and

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either Greek or Armenian origin and some three quarters of this sub-group had Armenian names. The proportion was approximately inverse to the population composition of the Bursa region — c. 17 per cent Greek and Armenian and c. 83 per cent Muslim. 40 The Bursa area was not atypical in this respect: 85 per cent of those from other Ottoman regions who attended the Institute also possessed Greek and Armenian surnames with the Armenians accounting for two-thirds of the group. 41 Thus, the Ottoman minorities, notably the Armenians, controlled the silkworm egg and cocoon production phases of the industry. The experiences elsewhere in the empire demonstrate that the eggs and cocoons produced around Bursa were utilized in a unique manner. After 1891, the Bursa area not only exported eggs abroad but also shipped them to other provinces, assisting in the foundation or expansion of silkraising 42 . The egg production of many other areas, by contrast, either satisfied only local demand or was exported for raising. Further, the bulk of cocoon production at Bursa was not exported but reeled into raw silk prior to shipment put of the country. Again by way of contrast, Aleppo sent 90 per cent of its cocoons abroad and retained 10 per cent for local needs 43 . Elsewhere in Syria and Lebanon, an extensive cottage industry manually reeled the raw silk and wove finished silk fabrics 44 . Bursa again was unique in that a considerable proportion of its raw silk derived not from manually-operated reeling devices in peasant homes and workshops but rather from a network of reeling mills, many of them steam-powered. The making of raw silk, the role played by steam power, and working conditions in the mills — form the foci of the following discussion. Bursa raw silk production, while roughly paralleling trends in egg and cocoon raising, did not fall as sharply during the crisis of the late 1850s and 1860s. Local mill operators sought to maintain production by importing eggs and cocoons, an effort inspired by unabated foreign demand for raw silk. For 1895. This sample contains 195 individuals or 22 per cent of all Bursa residents receiving such recognition between 1888 and 1905. The sampling for the entire empire, drawn from the same years as above and also 1891 and 1892, contains 363 individuals or 29 per cent of the 1,234 persons who successfully completed the various programs between 1888 and 1905. Sources: JCCC, 17 November 1894, p. 544; 9 November 1895, p. 536: 21 November 1896, p. 470; 20 November 1897, p. 374; 5 November 1898, p. 350. In BBA Yildiz 31 76/151 76 139, the government lamented the underrepresentation of its Muslim population at the Institute, citing statistics with proportions similar to those given above. 40 Bursa VS, for example, 1303 (1885), p. 68, and 1318 (1900), pp. 338-340. Also see Cuinet, IV, 113 and BBA, Yildiz 31 76/151 76 139. 4 ' S e e sources cited in n. 39. 42

DU Velay, p. 499, notes exports of 18,000 ounces of eggs from Bursa to Edirne, Selânik and Konya in 1899-1900. The Statesman's Yearbook for 1904, p. 1205, cites 15,000 ounces exported to Ottoman areas outside Bursa in 1902. 43

ZStA.AA. Nr. 6692. Bl. 87; sanayi 1917, pp. 123-124 and sanayi 1970, p. 160. Sanayi 1917, pp. 103, 123-124 and sanayi 1970, pp. 134, 160. An excellent account of the silk industry in the Lebanon is Dominique Chevallier, «Lyon et la Syrie en 1919», Revue Historique.,CCXX1V, Octobre-Décembre 1960, pp. 275-320, esp. 275-305. 4i

108

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

reasons discussed earlier, those measures only partially succeeded and raw silk output declined further in the 1870s. When the Debt Administration revived local egg and cocoon production, the reeling industry responded quickly. Table 3 indicates that raw silk production more than tripled between the late 1880s and 1908. But, while output rose substantially, a decreasing proportion of the raw silk was consumed locally. One observer noted that Bursa artisans were weaving 51,000 kgs. of finished silk cloth in the early 1890s, some 20 per cent of total raw silk production. Within a decade, as raw silk output rose from 200,000 to 600,000 kgs., the amount woven in the area fell absolutely, to as little as 12,000 kgs. Between 1900 and 1908, local craftsmen annually wove only two to seven per cent of Bursa raw silk output into fabric (Table 3). 45 'Hie role which steam power played in silk reeling was documented by an Ottoman government survey of «industrial establishments» as they had existed in 1913. Among such «establishments» were included those with a capital value in excess of 1,000 liras which utilized more than 75 man days per year, and possessed motors developing at least five horsepower. The silk reeling mills, meeting these standards were steampowered and all were located in the city of Bursa. 46 Owners of the steam reeling mills were heirs of a tradition in Bursa which dated back to perhaps die 1830s and was well established in the 1850s.4' The history of this tradition in the use of steam power for silk reeling is obscure, in part because 19th century Ottoman and European observers failed to distinguish between steam-powered mills and nonsteam factory establishments.48 The main outlines, however, are clear — after 1840, both factory establishments and steam-powered mills proliferated and replaced the previously-dominant practice of manual silk reeling in the home. In the first decade of the 20di century, 165 mills of both types utilized 9,200 basins (containers of heated water into which the cocoons were submerged to facilitate reeling onto wheels.) Altogether, these mills employed 19,000 persons in the province of Bursa and 4

^See sources cited in Table 3; V. Cuinet, IV. p. 98, for 1892-1893 figures. The relatively minor importance of silk weaving at Bursa suggested its exclusion from the present study. 46 Sanayi 1917, pp. 5-7, 13 and sanayi 1970, pp. 4-6, 14. 47

L . Erder, pp. 85-99; Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanli tarihi, VI: Islaltat fermant devri, 1856-1861, Ankara, ¡954, p. 243 and «Broussa», Encyclopedia Britannica, IV, 9th ed., 1878, 382; sources cited in n. 48; and Régis lVlbeuf. Une excursion à Brousse el à Nicée. Istanbul, 1906, pp. 145152. 4

^ F o r example, Mordtmann is an excellent observer of conditions in Anatolia during the 1840s and 1850s. After discussing the introduction of steam-powered reeling mills, he presents a table giving the number of spinnerei in the various areas. He notes that, in 1851, Bursa had 23 spinnerei with 1,572 reels and, in 1856, 45 spinnerei with 1,674 reels. It is unlikely that all the new spinnerei were steam-powered. The 22 spinnerei founded between 1851 and 1856 collectively contained 102 reels. Until additional research on this subject is undertaken, the precise number of steam mills, of whatever horsepower, remains uncertain. The statement of Karal, VI, 243, that Bursa contained 14 steam or water-powered silk factories in 1853 may be compared with Mordtmann's figures.

The Silk Industry of Bursa

109

adjacent district of Izmit 4 9 . A half decade later, in 1913, the government classified 41 Bursa mills as «industrial establishments», these steam-powered mills contained 2,313 basins and employed 4,600 workers, 20 per cent all «industrial establishment "employees"». Other, manually powered reeling establishments in the city used 127 basins and fewer than 300 workers. On the eve of World War I, steam silk reeling mills predominated in the city and provided employment for perhaps six per cent of its population. Although not innovators, the owners of these mills controlled the most advanced sector of the Ottoman silk industry . 5 0 Proprietors of the steam reeling mills and beneficiaries of the Silkraising Institute shared two characteristics. Both groups were at the forefront of their respective sectors: the graduates introduced the Pasteur technique and the steam mill owners applied inanimate power for the reeling of silk. Also, both groups generally were outside the mainstream of Ottoman society. Beneficiaries of the Institute, we have seen, primarily came from the Ottoman minority populations. Most owners of the steam reeling mills were either members of the same minority groups or foreigners. Greeks and Armenians owned at least 23 and perhaps as many as 26 of the 41 mills while six mills were the property of foreigners, primarily of French extraction. The Ottoman government, owner of two mills, rented one to a family of foreign origin residing in Bursa. No more than ten owners had Turkish names; they accounted for about one-quarter of the mills. Examining the ownership lists from the perspective of agglomeration demonstrates that seven families — all but one of foreign or minority extraction — owned or operated 19 mills, 46 per cent of the total. 51 Another source, utilising French consular records at Bursa, indicates that foreign and minority dominance was not confined to diese larger «industrial establishments» but extended over die entire silk reeling industry of the Bursa area. An itemized list noted the location, size, owner and manager of 131 reeling mills (apparently bodi steam and non-steam powered), utilising 7,685 basins in the city and province of Bursa. Twenty-six per cent of the 38 mills in the city were owned by Turks, die remainder by foreigners and the Ottoman minorities.

Revue, 31 May 1907, p. 846; R. Delbeuf, pp. 133-139 for different figures. At this time, only one steam reeling mill was operating in Persia and it apparently failed. Lafont and Rabino, pp 47-48. 50 S e e n. 46; also sanayi 1917 Table VI, p. 20 and sanayi ¡970; Table VI following p. 18. The survey surely excluded numbers of small steam-powered reeling mills not meeting the stated criteria. 5 ' D e r i v e d from sanayi 1917, pp. 119-120 and sanayi 1970, pp. 154-156, which also note that five mills were owned by «the wife of...» and Madame Garnet held another in partnership with a male. BBA Irade 1303 (1886). Dahiliye 77484.

110

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

In the rest of the province, the ownership distribution was nearly identical: some 24 of the 93 reeling mills were in the hands of Turkish owners. 52 The impression of Ottoman minority and foreign predominance reflected in the list of steam and non-steam reeling mill owners and Institute beneficiaries contrasts strongly with Muslim control of the silk trade in the earlier Ottoman period. 53 Although the nature and speed of this transformation from Muslim to non-Muslim ascendancy has yet to be traced in detail, certain elements in the shift can be noted here. The geographic position of Bursa, in western Anatolia close to the coast and Istanbul, exposed it to earlier and probably more intensive European economic infiltration. Security of life and trade at Bursa was greater than elsewhere in Anatolia, a function of its location and historic importance to the Ottoman regime. Attracted to this accessible, secure production center with an existing cadre of skilled workers, European merchants and entrepreneurs gradually assumed an important role in the economic life of the city. A turning point occurred in the 1840s when scores of experienced silk producers and reeling mill operators, mainly from France, emigrated to Bursa. Henceforth, foreigners played a direct and important role in the silk industry of the city. This European penetration upset die traditional indigenous balance in the industry. Muslims may have found it distasteful to participate in an increasingly European, Christian economic environment. Alternatively, their entry or continuation in silkraising may have been discouraged or blocked by Europeans who favored the Christian elements of the Bursa populace. In this milieu of emerging European economic supremacy, the Ottoman Christians clearly benefited most, although the precise relationship between the foreigners and the entrepreneurship of the minorities is still uncertain. The derivation of such entrepreneurial groups from the socio-cultural periphery of many countries has been noted 54 and it is not unusual to find diat the Christian Armenians and Greeks, living on the margin of a primarily Muslim Ottoman society, more eagerly pursued opportunities in the silk industry. Moreover, the assumptions concerning the value of commercial and industrial endeavors which these minorities shared with Europeans facilitated the latter's acceptance of Ottoman Christians as protégés in joint ventures. Perhaps more striking since it violates common assumptions concerning Ottoman entrepreneurship is the significant proportion of the steam and noristeam reeling mills owned by Turks. In some case, Turkish owners actively managed their factories and supervised the day to day operations. Others were members of the high bureaucracy who probably traded their status in the 52

R . Delbeuf, pp. 133-13^

53

H . tnalcik, «Capital Formation».

54 F o r example, Werner Sombart, Der Moderne Kapitalismus, first volume, second half-volume. Munich and Leipzig, 1924, p. 883: Warren Dean, The Industrialization of Sao Paolo, 1888-1945. Austin, Texas, 1969. pp. -18-57: and T h o m a s T. De Cregori, Technology and the Economic Development of the Tropical African Frontier, Cleveland, 1969, esp. pp. 14-32, f o r points of comparison and contrast with the Bursa case.

The Silk Industry of Bursa

111

government for a share in the profits of factories financed and managed by others. Alternatively, persons with wealth accrued through office or landholding may have sought a higher rate of return and played the role of investor, leaving management in the hands of employees more familiar with the industry. 55 The participation of the Muslim Turks on whatever terms suggests that the conventional notion of the group by nature disinclined to enter into commercial and industrial enterprises is an overstatement and in need of further study. The work force in the mills had emerged slowly and painfully, in a manner reminiscent of early European industrialization. During the 1840s and 1850s, several mills in the area were burned or destroyed by local residents. While European observers attributed the incidents to religious fanaticism and the like, the laborers who were involved may have been Ottoman-style Luddites. 56 Workers' unwillingness to endure die discipline of regular work hours in the newly-established factories made it difficult to maintain a stable work force. In response, the mill owners, resorting to a tried and true European practice, required employees to obtain and carry work cards. Only with such a card, noting the employee's reliability, experience, and conditions of recent employment, could the individual obtain a new position.57 Approximately 95 per cent of all workers in the Bursa mills were women and girls, many in their pre-teens. Although some Turkish and Jewish women were employed, the vast majority were Armenian and Greek. The shared religion of employees and employers did little to ease working conditions. Wages in the mills, by Ottoman standards, were quite low. In 1913, the average Ottoman «industrial establishment» worker drew 12 to 15 kuru$ per day but reeling mill employees at Bursa received a daily pay ranging from two to four kuruf*. Many of the girls and women lived in dormitory-like quarters near the factories, were awakened by a watchman and marched off to start a 16 hour work day. Beginning at nine A.M. with a factory-provided breakfast which some regarded as «poisonous», the women labored until one A.M. A break, perhaps as brief as 20 minutes, afforded the opportunity to eat in situh with resumption of work signaled by a whistle blast. There are reports of sexual abuse as well as beatings and other forms of maltreatment but the extent of brutal practices is uncertain. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 brought in its wake an upsurge of labor unrest in many Ottoman cities. The 4,600 steam mill employees at Bursa complained of their plight in class conscious terms and demanded a redress of BBA: Imtiyaz Defteri, # 2, p. 140, 1308 (1890); Bab-i Ali Evrak Odasi (hereafter BEO) 57834, 1313 (1896). BEO 61201, 1314 (1896); imtiyaz Defteri, # 1. pp. 96-97, 1319 (1901); Nafia 1316 (1898). Rebiyiilevvel # 3; trade 1307 (1889) Dahiliye 89995; and, Nafia 1318 (1901) $ewal # 5. Also see tftirak. 20 fubat 1325 (5 March 1910) and R. Delbeuf, pp. 133-139. 56 F o r example, the sources cited in B. Darkot, p. 808; also L. Erder, p. 90. 57

A . D . Mordtmann, p. 296. 58 Sanayi 1917 Table VIII, p. 23 and sanayi 1970 Table VIII p. 21. See W.W. Lockwood, p. 30, for a similar situation in the Japanese silk industry.

112

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

grievances, particularly an end to night work 59 . The women struck in August, 1910, but with few apparent results 60 ; the employment conditions sketched above prevailed until the collapse of the industry during World War I and the Turkish War of Independence. In the two and a half decades prior to World War I, the Bursa silk industry emerged as a prosperous and growing sector of the Ottoman economy. As egg production multiplied many times over, fresh cocoon and raw silk output rose three to fourfold. When the silk tithe is used as a measure, the total value of silk products seems to have increased at least fivefold during the same period. (Table 4) All this had little to do with the Ottoman regime or the majority of its subject population. The silk tithes of the Bursa area accrued to the Debt Administration for application against a European-owned public debt, the payments for which were scheduled to extend well into ihe 20th century. Foreigners had provided the market, the techniques and much of the capital while the Armenian and Greek minorities dominated the industry in all its phases. The development of Bursa silk production was a venture encouraged by foreign interests, largely but not solely effected by the Ottoman minorities, and of primary benefit to European creditors of the beleagured Ottoman treasury.

EPILOGUE

In 1911, widi tiie war against Italy for Tripolitania, the Ottoman state began a decade of nearly continuous warfare. The decision of the Istanbul Government to join the Triple Alliance spelled the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and was followed, in 1923, by the creation of the Turkish Republic. During tliis period of foreign, civil and national liberation wars, the Bursa silk industry virtually disappeared. Cocoon production fell from 7.8 to 0.8 million kgs. between 1913 and 1924 (Table 5) while, in approximately the same period, the overall value of silk production in Turkey declined from about one million liras (gold) to 175,000 liras (gold). As few as seven reeling mills in the entire country survived the prolonged conflicts.61 The collapse ol the silk industry may be attributed to a number of factors. The declaration of war in 1914 isolated Bursa from its leading trade partners and overnight eliminated its export markets. Bursa was occupied by the Greek army of the Athens government from July 1920 to September, 1922; the city and its 59 l}timk, 20 $ubat 1325 (5 March 1910) and 27 Mart 1326 (9 April 1910); sanayi 1970 p. 157, notes a 14 hour work day A 1905 Berne international agreement, to which states voluntarily could adhere, forbade night work for women. 60 Sabah, 18 August 1910, p. 3. 6

' « T u r k e y » , Encyclopedia Britannica, III, 13th ed., 1926, p. 853. Great Britain, Report on lite Trade and Economic Conditions of Turkey, dated January, 1921, London, 1921, pp. 14-15, states that cocoon production at Rursa fell below 500,000 kgs. in 1918.

The Silk Industry of Bursa

113

environs were the site of bitter battles between the Greek and Turkish armies. Further, the influx of refugees from the lost Balkan areas introduced new populations unacquainted with silkraising. Perhaps two-thirds of all mulberry bushes in the region were cut down for firewood (despite government prohibitions) or destroyed in the fighting. With the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the Debt Administration lost its control over the silk industry and ceased to function as an opportunity providor. Moreover, European animosity towards or mistrust of the new state, as well as stringent restrictions on outside capital, made foreign investors reluctant to aid in development programs. The disappearance of the Debt Administration as an active force in silkraising paralleled that of the Armenian and Greek populations. The decline in the silk industry in fact is discernible in 1912-1913 when new laws providing for Christian conscription into the Young Turk armies and the growing Turkish nationalism of that regime stimulated an outward migration of the minorities. Between 1912 and 1923, wartime casualties, emigrations, deportations, the «Armenian question» which is the subject of contemporary disputes among historians, and population exchanges after the war left republican Turkey with a fraction of the former Ottoman minority populations. Armenian, as well as Greek, entrepreneurs were largely absent in the republic. For a time, world demand continued to mount. France, the preeminent market for Bursa silk, consumed nearly 20 times the amount of silk which French sources could supply in 1924. World silk output in 1919 approximated that of 1913; by 1924, it had increased 43 per cent. Between 1925 and 1929, however, silk prices fell by a third. The global depression followed with a furdier collapse in prices and stagnation in die world silk trade. 62 Republican Turkey's inheritance in silk was, therefore, meagre. Almost totally lacking were the foreign organization, foreign capital, experienced silk raisers and, finally, the market. Kemal Atatiirk's administration, confronted with the formidable tasks of creating a nation and rebuilding a war-ravaged economy and society, devoted the bulk of investment capital (drawn largely from internal savings) to the development of industries furnishing basic consumer goods. With no vested interests speaking on its behalf, the promotion of silk production remained subordinate to the creation of a economic infrastructure. In c. 1938, silk production in republican Turkey peaked, at a level one-third that achieved by Bursa before World War War I 63 . Guardian Commercial article previously cited, p. 42. W.W. Lockwood, p. 45; United States, Historical Statistics, pp. 548-549: F. Dalsar, p. 473. Compare Tables 1 and 5. Dalsar, p. 476, notes the inability of republican Turkey to break into the Japanese-dominated market. The introduction of artificial silk made silk products available at lower cost and, until at least the 1920s, stimulated world consumption of natural raw silk. Here, United States demand again played the crucial role.

114

Workers, Peasants

and Economic

Change in the Ottoman

Empire

TABLE 1 FRESH COCOON PRODUCTION IN BURSA PROVINCE AND THE DISTRICT (SANCAK) OF IZMlT,

1884-1914

(ANNUAL AVERAGE IN MILLIONS OF KGS.) 1884 1885

2.4

1888 1890

3.1

1891 1895

4.1

1896 1900

5.2

1901-1905

6.3

1907-1909

7.6

1913

6.8

1914

3.1

Value of production (in millions of kuruf):

1894-53.2; 1895-45.5; 1896-58.6; 1904-

104.5, HUdavendigâr

1302 (1884), p. 361, indicates that tlie

Vilâyeti

Salnamesi,

value of cocoon products in the district of Bursa, the center of the industry, was 14 million kuru§. Sources: —

1884: Revue

commerciale

Commerce française

du Levant.

Bulletin

mensuel

de la Chambre

1885, 1909, 1913-1914: Vcdat Eldem, Osmanli

imparatorlugunun

iktisadi

$artlari hakkmda bir tetkik. Ankara, 1970, p. 128. 1888-1908: Hûdavendigâr

Vilâyeti Salnamesi,

1325 (1907), pp. 267-268.

1886, 1887, 1906. 1910-1912: not available.

TABLE 2 SILKWORM EGG INCUBATION AND EXPORT IN BURSA PROVINCE THE DISTRICT OF fZMIT,

AND

1888-1905

(ANNUAL A VERAGES IN 1,000 OUNCES OF 25 GRAMS

/OZ.)

imported

indigenous

eggs

eggs incubated

eggs incubated

exported

1888 1890

70

31

0

1891 1895

9

106

59

1896 1900

3

144

289

1901 1905

1

192

423

Source: Hiidavendigâr

Vilâyeti Salnamesi,

de

31 May 1908, pp. 797-82.

de Constantinople,

1325 (1907), pp. 267-268.

115

The Silk Industry of Bursa TABLE 3 RAW SILK PRODUCTION IN THE BURSA AREA, 1876-1908 (ANNUAL AVERAGES IN 1,000 KGS.) 1876-1880

85

1881-1885

140

1886-1890

186

1891-1895

264

1896-1900

401

1901-1905

517

1907-1908

610

Percentage of production consumed by local industry: 1900-5; 1901-7; 1905-3; 1906-4; 1907-2; 1908-6. Sources: Production — derived from «Silk», Encylopedia 104. For similar figures see: USCR

Britannica.

XXVII, 11th ed., 1911,

1901 LXV, # 244, p. 311 and ZStA.AA. Nr.

53738, Bl. 174r and Nr. 53736, Bl. 106. A. Gunduz Òk?un, Osmanli sanayii: 1915 yillan

istatistiki,

1913,

Ankara, 1970, p. 160, indicates Bursa-area production

exceeded 702,000 kgs., c. 1912. Consumption — The Statesman's Yearbook for 1903, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, pp. 1171. 1535, 1573, 1277, and 1274 respectively. ZStA. AA. Nr. 53739, Bl. 125, using different figures, indicates that in 1903 and 1904, three and five percent respectively were consumed locally.

TABLE 4 SILK TITHES COLLECTED BY THE DEBT ADMINISTRATION IN BURSA AND THE DISTRICT OF tZMIT, 1882-1905 (ANNUAL AVERAGES IN 1,000 LIRAS) 1882 1888-1890 1891-1895 1896-1900 1901-1905

PROVINCE

15 37 50 62 81

Sources: For 1882, see Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d'Asie: géographie administrative, statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l'Asie Mineure IV Paris, 1894, 60; for 1888-1905, see Hitdavendigâr Vilâyeti Salnamesi, 1325 (1907), p. 268.

116

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman

Empire

TABLE 5 FRESH COCOON PRODUCTION IN TURKEY, SELECTED YEARS, 1913-1938 (IN MILLIONS OF KGS) 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921

7.8 3,5 2.9 2.2 1 5 1 3 0 8 1 0 1 4

1924 1929 1930 1931 1933 1934 1935 1936 1938

0.8 2.0 1.7 1.0 est. 1.9 1.2 2.0 2.1 2.3

Sources: 1913-1920: Great Britain, General Report on the Trade and Economic — Conditions of Turkey, dated January, 1921 London 1921, pp. 14-16. — 1921; Bursa province only. Great Britain, Department of Overseas Trade, Report on the Economic and Financial Conditions in Turkey, February, 1922, London, 1922, p. 35. — 1924: Ibid.. Report on the Economic and Commercial Conditions in Turkey, April, 1925. London, 1925, p. 12. — 1929-1931: Ibid.. Report on Economic Conditions in Turkey, May 31st, 1932, London, 1932, p. 15. — 1933, 1936, 1938: Great Britain. Naval Intelligence Division, Turkey, II, Geographical Handbook Series, March, 1943, London, 1943, p. 207. — 1934-1935: Great Britain, Department of Overseas Trade, Report on Economic and Commercial Conditions in Turkey, 1936, London, 1937, p. 10.

MACHINE BREAKING AND THE CHANGING CARPET INDUSTRY OF WESTERN ANATOLIA

1860-1908

In mid-March, 1908, a crowd comprised largely of women and children attacked three mechanized wool spinning mills in the Ottoman carpet-making center of U§ak, carried off great quantities of stored wool, and destroyed the engine rooms. The riots at this western Anatolian town continued for several more days as crowds of up to 1500, usually women, marched in the streets and demanded redress of their grievances. Civilian and military authorities, who had been sent from the district (liva) center to quell the riots, released those arrested and advised the Istanbul regime to yield to (he demonstrators' demands. 1 The rioters at U§ak were reacting to a dizzying series of changes in the Ottoman carpet industry that had been taking place over the preceding 30 years. Since the midpoint of the nineteenth century, and especially after 1870, European and American demand for "Oriental" carpets had mounted rapidly. In response, merchants, some Ottoman but most foreign, had restructured the Anatolian carpet industry, creating tens of thousands of new jobs, altering the employment patterns and lifestyles of vast numbers of Ottoman workers who had been or became engaged in production of carpets. By 1914, contemporary observers suggest, some 60,000 persons were working in the carpet industry of Asia Minor. 2 Thus, in the midst of die post-1870 European industrial flowering, an Ottoman industry, producing a finished good, thrived.

* The fullest accounts of these riots are in a series of telegrams, often lengthy and more than a dozen in number, from the governor (vali) of Hiidavendigâr province, Tevfik, to the office of the Grand Vizierate, dated 1 Mart 1324-16 Mart 1324 (14-29 March 1908). These telegrams most frequently enclose wires sent from U$ak to the vali. These are in Ba$bakanlik Arjivi (hereafter BBA), Bab-i Âli Evrak Odasi (hereafter BEO) 693/2, s. 1-40 and also, s. 80-81 and 132. For a very brief report, also see BEO 703, telegrams dated 1 and 4 Mart 1324 to Hiidavendigâr vilayeli. ^Great Britain, Department of Overseas Trade, General Report on the Trade and Economic Conditions of Turkey for the Year 1919 (London, 1920), 64; idem, Foreign Office, Anatolia (London, 1920), 97.

118

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Scholars recently have been grappling with the economic and social changes in the late Ottoman Middle East under the impact of the Western/world economy. We now understand these processes of change were not mere decline or exploitation of passive natives by European agents. But we still focus overmuch on the macro-economic level, concerning ourselves with, for example, the flood of Manchester cotton or the rising direct European investments in the Mid East, and give little attention to the Middle East workers who, after all, were affected by the changing trade and investment patterns. Their gender and ethnic identity, conditions of labor, and record in dealing with the threats or opportunities presented by Europe are almost totally unknown.3 What jobs did cotton spinners or weavers find when imports eradicated traditional sources of employment? Who worked for the companies that the millions of francs created? Even after these questions have been researched and answered, the whole realm of nineteenth century Ottoman social history awaits, unexplored. The impact of the changing workplace on matters such as family relations and the status of women forms the subject of much research in European and American history but, in the Ottoman context, the questions scarcely have been asked. And how do all these economic and social changes relate to the vital political turning points in the region, events to which previous Ottoman scholars have devoted considerable attention? This article presents a first step toward a history of Ottoman workers in the nineteenth century, and it offers the beginnings of a reconstruction of Ottoman labor history in the era of European economic hegemony. In examining the caipet makers, primarily of U§ak but also of other Anatolian areas, it suggests the way in which economic change altered familial and ethnic relations and affected Ottoman political development. Oriental carpets came in a variety o f materials (mostly sheep's wool but also silk and mohair), shapes and colors. Both nomads and sedentaries occasionally made rugs for sale but most commercially-produced carpets traditionally had come from a few west Anatolian towns — in the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, U§ak, Gordes and Kula, as well Demirci, were the most important. 4 U§ak was the major single center (making mainly the large, all-wool, knotted rugs) and typically accounted for two-thirds to threequarters of all carpets produced and sold in Anatolia between c. 1860 and 1900. In common with its counterparts in Europe, this Ottoman protoindustrial zone had turned to handicrafts to make up for a deficient agriculture. Located on the lower approaches of the Anatolian plateau, the town sat in a region where rich soils •3 Among the earliest labor studies are those by Gabriel Baer. More recent works include those by Paul Dumont, see for example, "Jewish Communities of Turkey during the Last Decades of the XlXth Century in the Light of the Archives of the Alliance Israelite Universelle," in B. Braude and B. Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, I (New York, 1982), 209-242; also see my Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, ¡881-1908 (New York, 1983). 4For

example, see Käzim Dirik, Eski ve yeni türk haltcihgi ve cihan hah tipleri panoramasi (Istanbul, 1938), 45-46; Kurt Erdmann, Oriental Carpets, An Essay on Their History, trans, by Charles Grant Ellis (New York, 1960). 47-54.

119

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

were scarce, the climate continental and harsh, and where wheat was imported to sustain the local population. Close at hand, however, were sheep raising centers as well as the abundant water supplies needed to wash and dye wool. 3 In the second half of the century, under the impact of increasing Western demand for carpets, the townspeople devoted a rising proportion of their time to rug production. European appreciation for the knotted carpets of Asia Minor was hardly a new phenomenon in the nineteenth century. Art historians point to "Turkey" carpets in the paintings of fourteenth century European artists as proof these carpets were known, used and admired in the West not long after their development in Anatolia. 6 In the 16th century, "cartloads, camel-loads and horseloads" of Anatolian rugs, knotted and woven, were shipped regularly, "more or less," to the Balkans and thence to Western Europe.7 Rugs of varying grades were used by all but the very poor in the Middle East, but most Oriental rugs in Europe, until the mid-nineteenth century, were antiques of high quality, purchased only by the upper classes. After 1850, however, knotted carpets became increasingly popular, shifting from an item of quasi-luxury status to one purchased by the new consuming classes in the West with their enhanced buying powers. The growing gap between per capita incomes in the West and in the Middle East certainly made the rugs more affordable for many Europeans and Americans. There were also taste changes, toward heavily decorated rooms in which carpets and tapestries played an important role. European historians argue these taste changes in turn reflected the shifting status of middle-class women. Deprived of productive functions outside the home, they became consumers of goods and supervisors of households, directing servants in cleaning and maintaining these materially more elaborate homes. Between 1851 and 1876, a series of international exhibitions at London, Paris, Istanbul, Vienna and Philadelphia displayed and stimulated the proliferation of consumer goods, bringing Oriental carpets to the attention of the expanding middle classes of the West. 8 Fashion for a time dictated a Turkish corner, complete with tassled lamps, rugs and copper in the approved Oriental manner. The large "Smyrna" rugs — the knotted rugs of U§ak and western Asia Minor—became a familiar sight in Europe and America, in working- and middle-class homes alike.9

Ali Cevat, Tarih ve cografya liigati (Istanbul, 1311), 548; Remzi Banaz, Ufak'ta dokuma sanayii ve dokmmcihk (U$ak, n.d.), 8-10; William Cochran, Pen and Pencil in Asia Minor (London, 1887), 100. 6 F o r example, Walter B. Denny, "Anatolian Rugs: An Essay on Method," Textile Journal, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1973): 7-25; Dirik, Turk halicihgi, 7, 8, 17. 7

Suraiya Faroqfti, "The Early History of the Balkan Fairs," Südost-Forschungen

Museum

37 (1978): 60.

^Gordon A. Craig, Vie Germans (New York, 1982), 198; Dirik, Turk halicihgi, 31. 9

Birinci Köy ve Ziraat Kalkutma Yayuu, Turk ziraat tarihine bir bakif (Istanbul, 1938), 146149; Heinrich Stich, Die weltwirtschaftliche Entwicklung der anatolischen Produktion seit Anfang des 19. Jahrhundert (Kiel, 1929), 105-106; Dirik, Türk halicihgi, 31.

120

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

These trends sharply increased carpet exports and prices. The price of certain lower quality U§ak carpets rose by at least 50 percent between 1846 and 1873, while that of some higher grades increased 21 percent in the 1860s alone. 1 0 Total carpet exports from the Ottoman Empire jumped from c. 17 million piasters in the late 1870s to over 32 million by the middle 1890s (Table l). 1 1 Most carpet exports flowed through Izmir where their value rose from 90,000 to 170,000 pounds sterling in the 1870s12 and, a decade later, annually averaged over 188,000 pounds. By the turn of the century, annual Izmir carpet exports were soaring and between 1902 and 1908, they averaged 326,000 pounds (Table 1). In most years, one-half to two-thirds of Izmir carpet exports went to Great Britain, for domestic consumption and for re-export. United Kingdom imports of carpets and rugs from "Asiatic Turkey" increased from 103,000 pounds/year in the late 1870s to 166,000 pounds around 1900, to some 230,000 pounds in the decade before World War I.13

Carpet Carpet exports from (annual the Ottoman

years 1878/9-1881/2 1882/3-1886/7 1887/8-1891/2 1892/3-1896/7

millions piasters 17.4 15.8 21.9 32.2

Table 1 Exports, 1877-1913. averages). Empire

Izmir

of years 1877-1881 1883-1885 1888-1892

bales 2551 3085 3154+

pounds sterling 122,890 132,350 194,885

1897-1901 1902-1905 1906-1908 1910-1913

5446++ 7439 7164 8786

303,669+ 317,086 334,475

+four years only ++three years only Sources: Ottoman Empire — Le journal de la chambre de commerce de Constantinople, July 26, 1902, 233-234. Izmir — Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers, I z m i r / S m y r n a , 1876-1914.

^ C h a r l e s De Scherzer, la province de Smyrne (Vienna, 1873), 179; Edmond Dutemple, En Turquie d'Asie (Paris, 1883), 223-224, however, gives the impression of some decline in carpet prices. ^ 1 M.A. Ubicini, Letters on Turkey, I, trans, by Lady Easthope (London, 1856), 340, notes Smyrna carpets among the chief exports, in the same rank as Chios sandals, Tokat printed calicoes and Saionica gauzes. ,2 Scherzer, Smyme, 179; Roger Owen, The Middle East in tile World Economy, 1800-1914 (New York, 1981), 117. 13 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers (hereafter A&P) 80 (1877), 195; 68 (1882), 191; 80 (1887), 271; 77 (1892), 304; 98B (1902), 292; 87 (1897), 382; 83 (1907), 229; 86 (1912-1913), 2 4 ' 244.

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

121

The earliest available information, from the 1860s, suggests a form of putting out already was in place in western Anatolia. At U§ak, a number (bir kag) of Turkish merchants placed orders with some of the local knotters, giving them money or the materials needed to make the rugs. One Haci Ali Efendi, whose network included c. 3,000 homes that annually produced 84,000 m 2 of carpets, is cited as the most important of these merchants. 14 Some foreigners (an Izmir-based English firm is mentioned), however, had been active in the carpet trade at U§ak from as early as the 1830s.15 In U§ak, beginning in the early 1860s, the largest single transactions reportedly were handled by the French firm of A. Giraud that supplied carpet makers with materials on easy terms and thus had won preference over the Turkish rug buyers. 16 At this same time, three English merchants started supplying yarn and models to some carpet makers around U§ak and directly exported the rugs produced on their behalf.17 The English merchants became active at U§ak as important changes were occurring in the use of dyestuffs. For centuries, the rug makers had employed a variety of locally available natural dyestuffs, including madder root, saffron and yellow berries. In the nineteenth century, they added several natural dyes from the New World and the Indies although the former, cochineal, seems to have been adopted at U§ak only after c. 1850. In Europe, from 1856, chemists began developing various synthetic sources for the colors obtained from natural dyes and began a revolution in the dyeing industry that continued well into the 20th century. Contrary to popular belief, aniline dyes were color-fast if handled correctly, and also were cheaper and easier to use than natural dyes. And they had another advantage: their regular supply in large quantities was more assured than the procurement of materials from nature. Other breakthroughs occured as synthetic dyes chemically identical to the natural were discovered: by 1871, alizarin, a red dye, was being commercially produced in the laboratory. Still later other synthetic dyes superior to the aniline discoveries appeared, for example, an artificial indigo dye, that was developed after 1900.18 The rapidly growing presence of European merchants in U§ak and other rug making districts and their increasing marketing control over the industry coincided precisely with the invention of the artificial dyes. 19 The foreign merchants, already attracted to Anatolia by rising rug demand, were in a good position to benefit from the confusion that changes in the dyeing process caused 14

Orhan Kurmu$, Emperyalizmin

15

Cochran, Pen and Pencil, 100.

16

Dutemple, En Turquie, 222-223.

Tiirkiye'ye gtrif (Istanbul, 1974), 146.

17

Kurmuj, Emperyalim, 146. Stich, Die weltwirtschaftliche Entwicklung, 79, 107-109; Scherzer, Smyme, 171; Dirik, Türk hahciltgt, 36-40. 19 Kurmu$, Emperyalizm, 146-149. Largely based on Kurmuj are the accounts by Owen, The Middle East, 211-212 and Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Turkey, 1800-1914 (Chicago, 1980), 306-307. 1S

122

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

both among the Turkish merchants who had dominated the putting out system and among the Ottoman dyers themselves. Western demand for Oriental carpets had increased local wages and natural dye prices so that some U§ak carpet makers succumbed to the temptation and used the less expensive anilines to enhance their competitive stance. European and American consumers, for their part, encouraged the practice since these dyes produced the strong sparkling colors they preferred. The Americans in particular demanded rugs that mixed modern and traditional patterns, with unfamiliar color schemes that producers sought to achieve by using aniline dyes. 20 But the Ottoman dyers were inexperienced in handling the dyes and the inept use of these dyes at U§ak and the established centers was pronounced during the 1860s.21 The reputation of such centers was damaged and sales declined: at Demirci, for example, output fell to negligible levels.22 A technological change had made an opening in the carpet industry into which the foreigners moved and by the end of the 1870s (perhaps earlier), the house of A. Giraud operated one of the eight major dyeing works at U§ak.23 For the rest of the century, this firm and other European merchant houses more and more closely regulated the processes of production at U$ak. They controlled the fastness of the dyes and the production of those colors most suited to foreign tastes. The European houses stayed abreast of taste changes, introduced patterns that conformed to modern Western taste and replaced "ancient and tested" Turkish designs. Some miscarried, e.g., an effort by English merchants to introduce floral patterns that was abandoned by the 1890s, but other modern patterns were adopted successfully.24 The traditional carpet centers, beginning already in the early 1870s, had resumed the use of natural dyes. At U§ak, in the next decade, makers seem to have relied solely on red dyes made from madder root and cochineal to produce their best five grades of carpets. 25 Patterns shifted to suit foreign tastes but vegetable dyes exclusively continued to be used for the "finer" nigs through at least the later 1890s. For the lower priced, "current" quality rugs, aniline dyes were used while fashionable colors were obtained either by blending vegetable dyes with one another or by mixing vegetable with aniline dyes. 26 In sum, the arrival of synthetic dyes and of European merchants at U§ak was a period of 2

° J . M . Stoeckel, "Modern Turkey Carpets. A Monograph." in C. Purdon Clarke, ed.. Oriental Carpets. Publ. by Imp. and Roy. Austrian Commercial Museum (Vienna, 1892), II; Stich, Die weltwirtschaftliche Entwicklung, 109-110. 2

'Scherzer, Smyme, 172 j'y Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d'Asie; géographie de chaque province 2

administrative,

statistique,

descriptive

et

raisonnée

de l'Asie Mineure, III (Paris, 1895), 407.

^Dutemple, En Turquie, 223; Stockei, "Turkey Carpets," MI.

24

H a u s - , Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Politisches Archiv, XII, Türkei, Karton 272, Report of

the consulate at Izmir/Smyrna, January 4, 1896, 139. Cited frequently below, this source is referred to as "Vienna Izmir report." Also, Scherzer, Smyme, commerciale 25 2

et économique

Scherzer, Smyme,

171-172; Dutemple, En Turquie,

**Vienna Izmir report, 134.

172; F. Rougon, Smyme.

(Paris, 1892), 251-253. 223-224.

Situation

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

123

initial confusion and mishandling of the anilines, followed by an adoption of laboratory alizarin, a return to traditional dyes and a more judicious use of the chemical dyes. Speaking in the most general terms, the production of wool rugs included washing, cleasing and combing the wool, loosely spinning it, dyeing the yarn and then knotting or weaving the finished product. Nomadic and villager families made rugs primarily for personal use and, traditionally, performed all the various tasks within the single household unit. In the sedentary production centers oriented to the sale of rugs, carpet makers generally employed a more elaborate division of labor. 27 At U§ak, the division of labor differed from that in the other centers and was more sharply defined as well. Raw wool was purchased from Turkoman tribesmen near U§ak and at the great wool marketing center of Sivrihisar. By the early 1870s, when the first detailed reports became available, we see that men from the town and nearby villages were washing and bleaching the wool. Women, called old women in some sources, then spun the wool at home, when housekeeping duties had been taken care of and when they were not working in the surrounding fields. 28 Domestic industry exclusively produced the yarn at U§ak until the late 1890s. Between 1872 and 1896, however, there were very rapid increases in the amount of yarn needed to produce rugs in the town (see Table 2), and, by 1885, virtually every house in U§ak was engaged in some aspect of rug making. 29 As the need for yam continued to rise — carpet output in the town rose from 75,000 m 2 to 250,000 m 2 between 1885 and 1896 (see Table 2) — the increased volume of yarn required must have come from some combination of longer hours spent spinning and more household members engaged in the making of yarn. In either case, families were devoting increasing energies to carpet making. While the dependence of the town on carpet production rose, many spinners were able to remain independent of die foreign merchants and their agents. In the mid 1880s, an observer noted,

27

For example, see the sources by Stich, Dutemple, and the Vienna Izmir report cited above. Also see Herbert Coxon, Oriental Carpets; how they are made and conveyed to Europe (London, 1884). JO Scherzer, Smyme, 171; Dutemple, En Turquie, 221; Stoeckel, "Turkey Carpets," H I ; Cuitiet, Turquie d'Asie, III, 407; Cochran, Pen and Pencil, 100. These contemporary sources often are careless in their gender designation of the work force, for example, using the French or German masculine form of the noun when the same sources refer elsewhere to these particular workers as women. 29

Cochran, Pen and Pencil, 102.

124

Workers, Peasants

and Economic

Change in the Ottoman

Empire

the fleeces are spun into yarn [and] a local market exists for it on the spot, where, every Thursday, from dawn to sunset, a crowd of sellers and buyers assemble to traffic in the article. 3 0

Table Carpet

2

Production and Workers at U$ak,

workers

Production meters2

Years

pics

2

total #

loom

1883

c. 170,000

4000c

300,000

5-6000

3500 d

600e 800-900

75,000

1885

looms

6000b

85,00i ) a

1881

workers

3000

150,000

1873

1873-1910

1889 1892

150,000*

300,000

2500

1000

1896

250,000

446,000

8-9000

900-1000

490,000

6000

1200

1900 1902

6000

1906

1200

4250

2000 1175

5500

150,000

1910

6000

a. yards 2 b. "mainly women" c. 500 male washers and dyers d. "girls and women" e. year round looms, 1400 part-time looms f. derived from two independent sources Sources: Demetrius Georgiades, Smyrne et l'Asie Mineure

(Paris, 1885), 64; Great

Britain, Foreign Office, FO 424/222, 175, Izmir, May 9, 1881; Charles De Scherzer, La province

de Smyrne (Vienna, 1873), 170; Edmond Dutemple, En Turquie

d'Asie

(Paris, 1883), 222; United States Consular Reports, 1890, in Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic cografya

Histoiy

of Turkey. 1800-1914

(Chicago, 1980), 308; Ali Cevat. Tarih ve

lûgati (Istanbul. 1311). 548: F. Rougon, Smyrne. Situation

économique

Revue commerciale

et

du levant, July 1900, 212; United States Consular Reports, LXX,

#266, November 1902, 114; Heinrich Stich, Die weltwirtschaftliche anatolischen

commerciale

(Paris, 1892), 248; Vienna Izmir Report cited in n. 24 of text, 139; La

Produktion

Eidem, Osmanli

seit Anfang des 19. Jahrhundert

impaiatorlugunun

iktisadi

Entwicklung

der

(Kiel, 1929), 108-III; Vedat

jartlari hakkmda

bir tetkik

(Ankara,

1970), 142-143.

Ibid.; Cuinet, Turquie d'Asie, III 406, says Ihe market was for spun and dyed yarn. However, Cuinet's account generally is extremely close to that of Cochran's and may be its translation into French.

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

125

In the next phase of carpet making at U§ak, the yarn was taken and dyed by a separate group of male workers. At some other traditional production centers, such as Kula, for example, women knotters in the 1880s still dyed the yarn, as did the majority of Anatolian village carpet knotters. Various contemporary sources, dating from the mid 1880s, contrast the combined dyeingknotting functions elsewhere with the division of labor at U§ak and suggest this differentiation of function had occurred in living memory. 31 It probably had, 3 2 and seems related to the phenomenon of European-controlled dyeworks. At U§ak, by 1900, the trends toward separation of the dyeing-knotting functions and toward European control of the dyeworks were well advanced. At that time, "each agent possessed a dyeworks where all the looms working on his account were obliged, according to a long-established custom, to dye the wool." 33 However, the agents' take-over of dyeing at U§ak remained incomplete at the turn of the century when at least some agents still were buying dyed yarn from independent artisans and, on their own account, distributing it to the knotters. 34 The carpet knotters of U§ak exclusively were women and young girls; in contrast, at Kula and, apparently, Gordes as well, both men and women knotted. 3 5 The employ of men in the knotting of rugs at these two towns is noteworthy for it contradicts common assumptions about Ottoman jobs that supposedly were female or male tasks. Rather, at least at Kula and Gordes in the 1890s, men and women shared jobs, interchanging functions when necessary. At U§ak, women learned to knot as young girls working at the sides of their mothers, developing skills and then, after two years, receiving wages. 36 The number of knotters at U^ak rose steadily in the late nineteenth century. In the early 1880s, some 3000 women and 5000 girls worked more or less year round on some 600 looms; but, within a decade there were as many as 1,000 looms. By 1900, looms had increased to some 1200 and the number of loom workers reached its peak, at perhaps 6000 (See Table 2). Without exception the weavers worked in private homes and descriptions of the actual knotting process show little change between 1870 and 1914. Hie loom typically is described as a simple and large frame before which the women sat, each knotting threads of dyed wool to the warp and then passing die woof by hand without the use of a shuttle. The pile and die woof were driven down with great force by a large wooden comb and

Cochran, Pen and Pencil, 102; "Report of Consul Emmet of Smyrna," United States Consular Reports, 1890, in Issawi, Economic History of Turkey, 308; Cuinet, Turquie d'Asie, III, 407. 32 Scherzer, Sntyrne, 171 and sources cited in n. 23 above. 33 £ a Revue commerciale du Levant (hereafter RCL), July 1900, Lettre d'Ouchak, July 5, 1900, signed N. Berbérian, Directeur de la Succursale de la Banque Imperiale Ottomane. Similar descriptions are in United States Consular Reports, LXX, #266, November 1902, p. 414 and Stoecke), "Turkey Carpets," Il but not in any of the earlier sources cited previously in this study. 34 S e e sources cited in n. 30 above. Also, Vienna Izmir report, 134-135. 35 J Stoeckel, "Turkey Carpets," IV is the source for the Kula and Gôrdes workers. The sources cited here unanimously agree that only females knotted rugs at U$ak. 36 Stoeckel, "Turkey Carpets," IV.

126

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

(he pile cut short with a pair of locally-manufactured shears. 37 "All this work [was] done with an incredible dexterity and precision." 3 * Most families owned their own looms while some houses possessed two, three or even four looms. The mistress of the house herself knotted and she also directed the work of her daughters and of the "hired journeyman and apprentices" as well. She usually dressed the loom and adapted it for the particular rug Workers sat about two feet (.68 m) apart and each was responsible for that section of the rug. Most often the women worked the patterns from memory, but if a new design were being introduced, the most skilled of the workers made a model for the others to follow. 39 Workers who were not members of the family of the loom owner were paid either by the day or by the piece; that is, both systems of payment contemporaneously are reported by the sources. 40 Turkish Muslims dominated the knotting tasks and U§ak rug making in general, and overall, 85 percent of die town population was Muslim. 4 1 At an earlier time, Ottoman Greek women in the town also had manufactured the large deep pile carpets but by the 1870s were making only woven rugs. 4 2 In 1865, an Izmir merchant residing in U§ak: obtained a grant for Christians to make the pile carpets. There was a hard struggle, especially with the Mohammadan dyers; and only after many perservering efforts... was a firman granted ceding to the Christians the privilege to participate in a portion of this home industry. 43

37

Compare, for example, loom operation descriptions in Dutemple, En Turquie, 221-222; Cochran, Pen and Pencil, 102-103; Vienna Izmir report, 134-135; U.S. Consular report in Issawi, Economic History of Turkey, 308; Stoeckel, "Turkey Carpets," III. 38 Dutemple, En Turquie, 221. sources cited in n. 37 above. Cuinet, Turquie d'Asie, III, 407; Rougon, Smyrne, 249. Osmanli Sanayii, 1913, 1915 Yillan sanayi istatistiki (Ankara, 1970), 136. This source, hereafter cited as sanayi istatistiki, is a modern Turkish rendering, by A. Giindiiz Okpin, of an Ottoman governmental survey of industry originally published in Ottoman as 1329, 1331 Seneleri, Sanayi Istatistiki (Istanbul, 19171333) by the Ticaret ve Ziraat Nezareti. 40

4

'Cochran, Pen and Pencil, 101-101, states that, c. 1885, the town contained 3500 houses and 3300 of them (94 percent) were Muslim. Several years later, Cuinet, Turquie d'Asie, IV, 215, noted an U$ak population of 13,000, of whom 85 percent were Muslim. Ibid., 216, noted the Ujak kaza population as 76,000, of whom 95 percent were Muslim. Official Ottoman statistics from 1914/15, show the overall kaza population as c. 93,000, of whom 95,6 percent were Muslim; presented in Justin McCarthy, ed„ The Arab World, Turkey and the Balkans (18781914): A Handbook of Historical Statistics (Boston, 1982), 81: Ali Cevat, Cografya, 548, gives the town population at 15,000 and the kaza population at 77,000, with the latter being 95 percent Muslim. Rougon, Smyme, 248, states that the 2500 loom operators in U$ak once had been solely Turkish but in his time, c. 1892, were all Greeks and Armenians. At the time, the total number of Christians in the town was about 2000. This discrepancy and the testimony of the other sources cited indicate his statement is inaccurate. 42 Dutemple, En Turquie, 221). 43 Stoeckel, "Turkey Carpt N " IV.

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

111

Nevertheless, Ottoman Christian participation in the making of deep pile rugs at U§ak subsequently remained insignificant. Once again, the industry at U§ak differed considerably from that in other areas of Anatolia. In many regions, such as Kutahya and Kaysen, rug making was (re)introduced or expanded by merchants in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries and the merchants employed large numbers of Greek and Armenian women on the new looms. The hiring of Christian knotters by merchants became so pronounced that, after World War I, Greek and Armenian refugees produced rugs in mainland Greece and in Egypt and, for a time, Greece surpassed republican Turkey as a rug producer.44 U§ak loom operators were involved in a variety of relationships with European merchants rather than a single one of monolithic merchant dominance. That is, the U§ak loom owners differed considerably in their ability to retain the status of independent artisan in an era characterized by growing merchant power in the rug industry. Overall, at U§ak, a transformation of the work force in the sense one might expect did not occur — there was no uniform, linear development of the work force as a whole from independent carpet producer to dependent piece worker. Rather, there were at least three different kinds of loom operator-agent relationships existing simultaneously. In the first, the operator received cash advances from the agent and, in exchange, pledged to produce for the agent. She thus lost a certain freedom of choice on completing the rug, that is, a loss over distribution. But the loom operator, using the advances to buy materials, retained a significant measure of autonomy, maintaining control over the various phase? of rug production. This kind of relationship did not vanish toward the end of the century when the merchants were in a generally more powerful position, but existed in 1900 as it had in the 1870s. The number of such workers and their changing proportion of all loom operators, however, is unknown. A second kind of relationship, in which a loom operator committed to use only the dyeworks of the agent in exchange for the advance, marked a further stage of dependence for die rug producers. Here, the loom owner lost control over a production function as well. The third relationship marked a still greater loss of autonomy; die loom operators, in their homes, accepted dyed yarn that the agent had obtained and brought to them. In this stage, the operator was in a state of real dependency — awaiting the arrival of the merchant with the yarn to even begin work — and the merchant had firm control over the production process.45 In Europe, this last system was marked by endless disputes over just how much of die delivered material had been used in manufacturing or hidden by the producer for personal use; but, in the case of U$ak, no such documents recording 44

T h e London Times, December 31, 1904; V. Gurdji, Threads from the Oriental Loom (New York, 1913), 72; Denny, "Anatolian Rugs." 22; Stich, Die weltwirtschaftliche Entwicklung, 32. 1 presently am studying the structure of the carpet industry in these newly-established production centers. 45

Cochran, Pen and Pencil, 102; Cuinet, Turquie d'Asie, IV, 407; Stoeckel, "Turkey Carpets," I; Vienna Izmir report, 135; RCL, Lettre d'Ouschak, 212-213, cited in n. 33 above.

128

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

disputes are presently available. The operator who awaited the merchant and his yarn certainly suffered in comparison with the loom owner who arranged for the delivery of her own yarn and its dyeing and was courted by the agent with cash advances. Even the most dependent U§ak loom owners, however, fared well relative to many operators elsewhere in Anatolia who recently had been brought to carpet making by the merchants. These Greek and Armenian women sometimes did not even own their looms and were provided them and the production materials by the merchants. 46 At U§ak, the long-standing nature of the craft and the strong demand for its unique products provided the producers with some protection. In the 1890s, foreign demand for rugs combined with two Western technologies to further alter die lives of the U§ak workers. For decades, demand steadily had pushed up die local production of carpets: from 150,000 pics 2 (maximum) in die early 1870s to 300,000 pics 2 in 1889 to 446,000 pics 2 in 1896 (see Table 2). Throughout these decades, increases had been won by the techniques described above — increased attention and time given to rug making tasks, larger numbers of workers, division of labor and intensification of the work pace through closer merchant control. Similar to many cases of European protoindustrialization, production at U§ak rose substantially without mechanization. 47 But by the mid 1890s, U§ak approached its maximum output capacity: to meet the still-rising demand, the division of labor was altered and men in U§ak assumed some work functions once controlled by local women. 48 As seen, carpet making tasks at U§ak generally were divided along the following gender lines. Men washed the wool, women combed and spun, men then dyed it and finally women knotted the carpets. In select examples of European protoindustrialization, men and women often shared productive functions. 49 This also was the case at U§ak. In January 1896, a usually reliable observer noted Uiat a shift in gender roles had taken place. "The wool cleaning, spinning (my stress) and dyeing," the Austrian consul said, "is done exclusively by men." 50 His report suggests that, during the months when agricultural duties were few, men took over the spinning of wool, thus relieving women knotters who also had been yarn spinners and, perhaps, permitting the female spinners to take on new tasks

46 RCL July 1900, 206, Lettre de Sivas, August 8, 1900, signed Habib Siufi, Dragoman of the French Consulate. 47

S e e Dolores Greenberg, "Reassessing the Power Patterns of the Industrial Revolution: An Anglo-American Comparison," American Historical Review (1982): 1237-1261. 48 ÄCZ, Lettre d'Ouschak. 212-213, cited in n. 33 above. 4

^ S e e . for example, Jean H. Quataert. "Workers' Reactions to Social Insurance: The Case of Homeweavers in the Saxon Oberlausitz in the late Nineteenth Century," Internationale wissenchaftliche Korrespondenz (März 1984), Heft I and Hans Medick, "Haushalt-und Familienstruktur als Momente des Produktions-und Reproduktions-prozess," in Heidi Rosenbaum, ed., Seminar Familie and Gesellsckafts-strukiur (Frankfurt/ M, 1978), 285-305. 5 ®Vienna Izmir report, 1 '5.

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

129

at the looms. This use of men as the "exclusive" 51 spinners of yarn underscores the gender interchangeability of productive functions among U§ak carpet makers and again shows that prevailing assumptions of Ottoman male-female tasks are erroneous. Male dominance in spinning at U§ak, however, was short lived as, within two years, the mechanized production of yarn came to town. Until the 1890s, various factors had protected U§ak producers from the introduction of mechanization. First, the town had been able to increase output substantially through a reallocation of existing labor resources. Second, the town population was relatively homogeneous and quick to mobilize in its own defense. A well-informed source noted in the spring of 1891, recently two capitalists joined to erect a worsted spinning factory for carpet manufacturing in Oushak. The Government, however, prohibited the undertaking in consequence of a strong protest on the part of the inhabitants. 52 Third, available wool spinning machine technology had been yielding a yarn that produced an unacceptably stiff carpet. The adoption of spinning machinery had been attempted at U§ak c. 1880 but "the result was eminently unsatisfactory" and "after a short time the spinning apparatus was abandoned..." 53 This failure and the inability of machines to replace manual labor at U§ak mirrors the experiences of industrialization in Europe. There, "as late as 1850... hand spinning of ordinary woolen yarn dominated manufacturing" even in England. 54 And, fourth, the lack of modern transport facilities had inhibited the introduction of large machinery. The animal transport system between U§ak and Izmir, some 127 miles/204 km. distance, worked quite well for caipets and many goods but camels were an awkward means of transporting the bulky and heavy steam engines and boiler plate. While steam engines indeed were brought into many remote areas of Anatolia by animals, inadequate transport and problematic yarn spinning machinery long combined to deter the establishment of steam spinning factories at U§ak. By the late 1890s, however, wool spinning technology could manufacture a yarn suitable for use in Oriental carpets and, in October 1897, the first direct railroad links were established between U§ak and Izmir. The rug making center now enjoyed rail access to its traditional export center and, two months later, the line was extended through the town to Afyonkarahisar, affording connections to Istanbul. 55

51

The reference in ibid, lo "exclusive" might be erroneous. But the report, that clearly indicates male spinners when earlier (and later) sources note female spinners, irrefutably demonstrates job sharing between genders. •"•Stocckcl, "Turkey Carpets," !. Cochran, Pen and Pencil, 101. 54

Greenberg, "Power Patterns," 1246. 55 M . Hecker, "Die Eisenbahnen der asiatischen Türkei." Archiv für Eisenbahnwesen (1914): 796, 797, and 1296. For some details on rug transport, see Cuinet, Turquie d'Asie, III, 407-408

130

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Entrepreneurs acted quickly to establish steam-powered wool yarn spinning factories in the town. The first was founded in 1898/9 (by Tiridzade Mehmet Pa§a) and quickly was followed by two more, established respectively, in 1900/1 by Bifakzade Ali and partners and in 1903/4 by Yilancizade Osman Efendi. The owners of the three factories were described by the Ottoman government as being, generally, Ottoman subjects and Muslims. Little is known about the mills. Until 1908, the three manufactured only yarn and the plants of Bifakzade Ali and Yilancizade Osman Efendi each could produce 500 kgs. of yarn per day. The factory of Tiridzade Mehmet Pa§a was acquired by Hamzazade and partners in 1910 and in the immediate prewar period manufactured both yarn and cloth, some 30,000 m 2 per years. 56 Until at least 1908, most workers in the mills were women. 57 We presently know nothing at all, however, about working conditions in the factories or subsequent social changes in the town. In European industrialization, the dislocations brought about by the introduction of factories and factory labor were enormous, '['lie abrupt shift in work routines, the removal of wage-earning labor from the home, the consequent separation of family members and the appearance of scheduled work hours all meant substantial disruptions in the established patterns of life at U§ak that presently only can be surmised. Ironically, the I Jsak workers were making the difficult adjustment to factory life just as carpet production in the town peaked. Present levels, some 490,000 pics 2 , could not be surpassed, the director of the local Ottoman Bank branch complained in 1900, because there were not enough looms. Recently, he said, orders had risen 150 percent but could not be filled on time because of this insufficiency. 58 Indeed, after c. 1900, the quantity of carpets made in Usak had leveled off and perhaps declined, 59 while in Anatolia as a whole, carpet production continued to increase rapidly. In fact, U§ak had been slipping in relative importance since before 1900. From the outset of the carpet boom in the 1870s, merchants in Istanbul and Izmir promoted impressive rises in the production of many areas, including U§ak. But the merchants, particularly from

and IV, 219. The easy transfer of freight via rail to Istanbul, however, was blocked by tariff wars between rival railroads serving Istanbul and Izmir. See my "Limited Revolution: The Impact of the Anatolian Railway on Turkish Transportation and the Provisioning of Istanbul, 1890-1908," Business History Review (Summer, 1977): e.g., 145-147. 56

B B A BEO 693/2, tele. * 784, 4 Mart 1324. Sanayi istatisliki, 141, gives later dates for the foundation of the three mills that, probably, reflect reorganization or refinancing of the respective firms. Stich, Die weltwirtscliaftliche Entwicklung. 112; sanayi istatisliki, 141; 1919 report cited in n. 3 above 64. J57 Derived from sources cited in n. 1 above. 58 59

flCZ, Lettre d'Ouschak. 212-213, cited in n. 33 above.

T a b l e 2, shows that production slipped from 250,000 to 150,000 m 2 between 1896 and 1910. However, the reporting sources are not uniform, i.e., the latter is official Ottoman while the iormer is not. The workt-i numbers in Table 2, however, corroborate the impression of decline given by the production figures.

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

131

Istanbul, seem to have focused on areas outside the centers of U§ak, Gôrdes and Kula, and were active especially in the 1890s. Hie conditions of labor in these new production centers, while explaining the interest of the merchants, undermined the vitality of the industry at U§ak. As seen, many loom operators in these areas were Armenian and Greek women, often dependent on the merchants for their looms as well as supplies. These rug makers earned considerably less than those at U§ak. Although the U§ak knotters earned very little by contemporary Ottoman standards, Sivas and Burdur knotters, for example, earned some 40 percent less for the same amount of work. 6 0 In many of these new centers, furthermore, centralized workshops were established that threatened the U§ak producers in yet another way. 6 1 Working generally at home and so subject to frequent interruptions, good knotters in U§ak averaged 5-6,000 knots per day. In many of the new production areas, women assembled outside their homes in workshops where close supervision and other practices accelerated the workpace and a worker daily produced up to 14,000 knots. 62 Thus U§ak knotters competed with workers who were paid less and worked faster. By 1899, even though U§ak production had at least doubled since the 1870s, its relative share of rugs exported via Izmir had slipped from a commanding 77 to 56 percent (Tables 2 and 3). And, in the few years between 1899 and 1910, its overall importance plummeted still further, to no more than 23 percent of all rugs exported from Izmir (Table 3). As carpet exports from Izmir more dian doubled between 1900 and 1911, production at U§ak stagnated (and perhaps fell) and, in the early 20th century, the output of die new areas eclipsed that of U§ak (Tables 1-3). 63 The Oriental Carpet Manufacturers, Ltd., that began operations in January 1908, entered Uçak during this era of stagnation. Founded by a group of longestablished Izmir merchant houses dealing in rugs, the trust sought to defeat the efforts of their commercial rivals to corner the rug trade. A major factor in the carpet industry in die years before World War I, the trust won considerable successes and by 1913 controlled as much as three quarters of total Anatolian rug production. 6 4 The Carpet Manufacturers Ltd. established rug workshops, ultimately numbering 17, in towns and cities across western and central Anatolia

60

Sanayi

istatistiki,

136.

61

F o r example, The London Times, December 31, 1904; Great Britain, Foreign Office 424/213, Young to O'Connor, TrabSson, June 8, 1907; RCL July 1900, Lettre de Sivas cited in n. 46 above. 62 Preben Liebetrau. Oriental Rugs in Colour (New York, 1963), 17 and, for example, sanayi istatistiki, 136. 63

A l s o see, Vedat Eldem, Osinanh imparatorlugunun 1970), 143.

64

Kuimu$, Emperyalizm, Turkey, previously cited.

iktisadi sartlari hakkinda bir tetkik (Ankara,

150-152; Owen, The Middle East, and Issawi, Economic

History of

132

Workers, Peasants

The Participation

and Economic

Change in the Ottoman

Table 3 of U$ak in the Anatolian Carpet

Empire

Industry,

1873-

1910 1873

77 percent of exports from Izmir province (by value)

1881

75 percent of production of western Anatolia (by value)

1890

66 percent of exports from western Anatolia (by value)

1896

73 percent of exports from western Anatolia (by volume)

1899

56 percent of exports from Izmir province (by value)

1910

23 percent of exports from port of Izmir 8

a. The comparison is between U§ak production in 1910 and Izmir exports. The 23 percent figure is a maximum, assuming that all U§ak production exited via Izmir. Sources: Charles De Sclierzer, La province de Smyrne (Vienna, 1873), 1873; Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic Cuinet, La Turquie

History of Turkey, 1800-1914

d'Asie;

raisonnée de chaque province

géographie

administrative,

(Chicago, 1980), 306; Vital statistique,

descriptive

et

de l'Asie Mineure, IV (Paris, 1894), 407; Vienna Izmir

report cited in n. 24 of the text, 139-142; La Revue commerciale 1900, 201; Vedat Eldem, Osmanh

imparatorlugunun

du Levant,

iktisadi ¡artlari

hakkmda

luiy bir

tetkik (Ankara, 1970), 142-143.

and usually employed Greek and Armenian women as knotters. At the shops, it provided diese women with yam that had been spun and dyed at its own factories, located in the northwest Anatolian town of Bandirma and the city of Izmir. In 14 other locations, including U§ak and the other traditional production centers of Gordes, Kula and Demirci, the trust preferred to establish only agencies, not workshops. The agents worked for a salary plus bonuses, and not on the commission basis dial had prevailed in the carpet trade of Anatolia. 65 Company policy dictated that loom operators making carpets for these agents use only dyed yarn that had been prepared in its factories.66 The Carpet Manufacturers Ltd, thus took away spinning and dyeing jobs in Uçak while vastly increasing the number of competing looms working outside the town. In this manner, it introduced the final set of changes that helped trigger the riots of March, 1908. Two days after the crowd attacked the factories, carried off the wool and wrecked the engines, another group gathered before the government house and demanded the release of those arrested. The next day, three days after the initial sacking, a smaller crowd of 500 to 600 again assembled, concerned that efforts to protect the ruined building of Ytlanctzade Osman Efendi from rains meant the Sanayi istatisliki, vii-vin; Das llandelsmuseum, October 24, 1914; Kurmu?, Emperyalizm, 150152. For a photograph of a workshop see Louis Vaczek and Gail Buckland, Travelers in Ancient Lands. A Portrait of the Middle East, 1X19-1919 (Boston, 1981), 130. 66

S o u r c e s cited in n. 65 above and B B A BEO 693/2, tele. #784, 4 Mart 1324 enclosing wire of same date from the governor and the police superintendent.

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

133

factory was being renovated and soon would reopen. They protested against the repairs and demanded demolition of the structure. Then, "rejoicing in the misfortunes of others" that left them work, the women dispersed. 67 The governor ( m u t a s s a r i f ) and chief superintendent of police (ser komiser) of the Kiitahya district (liva) in which U§ak was located had been sent to quell the riots. On hearing the demands, they prohibited the retiling of the factory roof and sought to explain the anger of the crowds to their superiors in Istanbul. Women in U§ak and the surrounding villages, they telegraphed, for ages had combed and spun wool and sold the yarn to make a living. The "greater part" of these women "now are without work," the officials explained, due to the presence of the spinning factories and of the Carpet Manufacturers Ltd. and its U§ak-based agents, Kayserizade (?) Osman Aga and associates. These agents recently had begun doing business and all the carpets they commissioned, the two officials stated, could be made only from dyed yarn imported into the town from the factories of the trust. The women of U§ak and neighboring villages, they said, had concluded that their livelihoods were being eliminated by the spinning factories and by the trust and could be assured only if (1) the factories were demolished totally and completely and (2) yarn imports from the spinning mills of the trust were prohibited. The governor and police superintendent recommended that the central government satisfy those twin demands because any other approach would produce popular violence, its forcible suppression and further suffering. Thus, they concluded, agents of the carpet company should be ordered not to import yarn and the factories should remain closed. 68

CONCLUSION The riots at U§ak preceded by a few months the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908, a landmark event in twentieth century Middle East history. Consisting of a wide variety of groups and individuals, these "Young Turks" were united in the belief that the existing Ottoman government was despotic and incapable of protecting the territorial integrity of the empire. Ottoman historians, by and large, have viewed the Young Turk seizure of power in isolation, as a coup d'état by a group of military officers whose mutinies led to unexpected successes and the restoration, after a three decade interruption, of constitutional government in the Ottoman Empire. From my own research, however, a different picture is emerging. Viewed from the general perspective, the revolution stemmed from the dislocations brought on by rising European economic penetration of Ottoman society and its economy. Looking more closely at the

fi 7 BBA BEO 693/2, tele. #325, 2 Mart 1324 and enclosures of same date from the governor and police superintendent and tele. #12, 3 Mart 1324 and enclosure of same date from the two officials. 68 B B A BEO 693/2, tele. #784, 3 Mart 1324 enclosing the two officials' wire of the same date.

134

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

period preceding the revolution, it is clear that the mutinies and revolution occurred in the context of massive and mounting popular unrest. The unrest in turn stemmed from a series of widespread crop failures in the Ottoman empire Food prices reached record highs in many areas and the standard of living for workers declined abruptly. Many workers on the railroads, in the mines and in other sectors, began to mobilize while bread riots erupted in a number of towns and cities. 69 In both the European and Asiatic parts of the Ottoman Empire, Young Turk provocateurs were seeking to profit from the economic crisis and were circulating among disaffected workers (and perhaps peasants as well). These activities were given voice in a December 1907 appeal, by one group of revolutionaries, for various forms of resistance to the Ottoman government, including strikes and and even general insurrection.70 Simultaneously, the state was undergoing a crisis of confidence, and the proposal of the governor and police superintendent to yield to the U§ak workers concretely illustrates the unwillingness or inability of ranking officials to confront such unrest. As the following discussion indicates, the riots at U§ak and the July revolution were closely linked. Indeed, the evidence of the U§ak riots concretely demonstrates for the first time the connection between the mounting economic discontents and the agitational activities of the Young Turk revolutionaries. In their riots, the carpet makers were joined, the Ottoman telegrams say led, by a newly-arrived kaymakam, a central government appointee of a bureaucratic rank similar to that held by many Young Turk agitators. The revolutionaries in fact had sent ibis official, Ishak Tevfik Efendi, to the town. Soon after his arrival, Isliak Tevfik Efendi began urging the rug workers to sack the factories and was joined by a number of local notables, including the mayor (belediye reisi).71 Some of these notables may have been business rivals of the factory owners or of the carpet company agents. The kaymakam, for his part, publicly complained of his poverty and the non-payment of his salary. Moreover, in the course of the riots, he was in contact with important personages in the capital. 72 Agents of the Ottoman secret police intercepted his letter to the house of one Osman Pa§a, in 69 S e e my Social Disintegration, esp. 147-155; also my "The Economic Climate of the 'Young Turk Revolution' in 1908, " The Journal of Modern History (1979) On Demand Publication, D 1147-1161; and, my "The 1908 Young Turk Revolution: Old and New Approaches," The Middle East Studies Association Bulletin (1979): 22-29. 7 ®Neither the identity of many agitators nor the particular revolutionary group to which they belonged is known at this time; but their activities follow closely the guidelines set out by ihe December 1907 Second Congress of Ottoman Liberals. If they were members of this group, then the assessment by Ernest Ramsaur. Jr., The Young Turks. Prelude to the Revolution of 1908, Reprint, (Beirut, 1965). 29-131 is incorrect. My thanks to §iikrü Hanioglu for his helpful comments on this issue. Also, see his, "Genesis of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908," The Journal of Ottoman Studies 111 (1982). 71 B B A BEO 693/2, tele. #166, 1 Mart 1324; #325, 2 Mart 1324 and enclosure of 1 Mart 1324 from the governor and the police superintendent. And again, thanks to §ükrü Hanioglu for the information he provided. 72

B B A BEO 693/2, tele. H 2 \ 2 Mart 1324 and enclosure of same date by the two officials.

Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia

135

Istanbul. After reading the letter, the secret police concluded that the kaymakam had caused the riots. This assessment decidedly overestimates Tevfik Efendi's role and it points to the failure of the police to acknowledge the workers' grievances. The authorities attributed social unrest to intra-elite squabbles and denied the importance of the widespread discontent in late Ottoman society. Tevfik Efendi's ties to the larger underground organizations of Young Turk revolutionaries are now undeniable; however he was agitating in a context that was sympathetic to political change. 7 3 The specific links to disorders elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire during the 1907-1908 period remain to be established but the example of the U§ak riots and the kaymakam clearly indicate the patterns such connections may have followed. More generally, the evolution of carpet making at U§ak and the riots of March 1908 illustrate well the dislocations brought to Ottoman society by the world market. Here, seeking carpets to fill the lives and homes of Western women whose own existences were being recast by the new social and economic order, market forces changed the livelihoods and lifestyles of thousands of U§ak residents and tens of thousands in Ottoman Anatolia as a whole. Production at U§ak had climbed again and again over the several decades and local families were shifting over to carpet production (with presently unknown effects on standards of living), devoting proportionately more time to rug making and less to other tasks. As they spun and dyed more yarn and knotted more rugs, their ties to other forms of livelihood dissolved and their dependence on carpet making increased. Sharper divisions of labor became commonplace among the U$ak producers but gender roles often seem not to have been defined rigidly. In the mid 1890s, men temporarily took over the spinning functions. Such male-female job switching was possible because, unlike rug making in the newer areas of production, most phases of rug production at U§ak still took place in the home. Only dyeing, a task done by men, occurred outside. Subsequently, factory work with its accompanying and severe dislocations arrived in the town. But the decades-long trend of production increases faltered or halted around 1900, and workers who had been adapting to protect their livelihoods saw those jobs thrown into jeopardy. Locally-made factory spun yarn became available in the late 1890s, at the moment when carpet production outside the town was rising rapidly. U§ak producers, with their long traditions of liandicraft and increasing reliance on rug making, found themselves squeezed by the mechanization of yarn spinning on the one hand and by a new, faster working, lower paid cadre of workshop loom operators on the other. The threat intensified when the Carpet Manufacturers Company sought to create still more carpet making jobs outside the town while denying U§ak workers their combing, spinning and dyeing jobs. It also should be reiterated that carpet making at U§ak remained overwhelmingly in Turkish 70 Sources cited in n. 72 above. Also, BBA BEO 693/2, tele. #1566. 12 Mart 1324; #1749, 15 Mart 1324 and #161, 16 Mart 1324. Also, Hamoglu, "Genesis of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908," 298 and sources therein.

136

Workers, Peasants

and Economic

Change in the Ottoman

Empire

Muslim hands while elsewhere in Anatolia, Ottoman Greeks and Armenians assumed greater roles. Thus foreign demand for carpets placed more severe strains on the already disharmonious relations among the Ottoman religious and ethnic communities. While the U§ak riots were directed against factories, there remained the potential for violence against Ottoman Christians who also could be held responsible for the lost livelihoods. The example of the IJ§ak carpet makers seems to share much with eighteenth and nineteenth century European experiences with industrialization. For decades, carpet manufacturing expanded very rapidly with little in the way of technological improvements, just as in Europe even British textile production remained unmechanized for a surprisingly long period of time after the "Industrial Revolution." On the one hand, the comparison cannot be pushed too far because of the unique nature of the product so much in demand in Europe and America. Nowadays [1914]... weavers are discouraged in many cases from producing rugs of so mathematically accurate a design that they would be indistinguishable from machine-made carpets. The associations of artistic romance and ancient beliefs that attach to the Turkey carpet make it unlikely that its manufacture could be started in Western countries with success.74 On the other hand, the emergence of other, cheaper, Anatolian production centers outside U§ak is very reminiscent of the earlier quest of entrepreneurs in Britain to escape the restrictive practices of guilds and other cohesive bodies of workers. Hand knotted rugs fascinated Westerners and the availability of cheap Middle Eastern labor kept the industry alive in Anatolia. But entrepreneurs pursued still cheaper sources and so jeopardized patterns of livelihood in traditional centers such as U§ak. And so, like dieir Luddite counterparts in England, the U§ak workers wrecked machines to register their protest and defend their jobs. Yet, at U§ak, the factories quickly were rebuilt and were operating again as the Ottoman Empire entered World War 1 75

1A

The Board of Trade Journal, May 28, 1914, 511. 7S ,J Sanayi istatistiki, 140-141, indicates that, at the time of the 1913 O t t o m a n industrial survey, the three factories were operating again. Similarly, the 1914 source cited in n. 74 states that in the carpet industry, "yarn is now machine spun," 510.

THE EMPLOYMENT POLICIES OF THE OTTOMAN PUBLIC DEBT ADMINISTRATION 1881-1909

The Ottoman Public Debt Administration, established by the Decree of Muharrem in 1881, is justly famous as the collective instrument of European financial imperialism during the late Ottoman period. Nearly all the scholarship on the Debt Administration has focused on its fiscal powers and impact, deservedly so perhaps, since these were vast and of major significance. 1 The present work focuses instead on the social aspects of the Debt Administration and its presence in the Ottoman Middle East.2 Specifically, the concern here is with the Debt Administration as a major employer of Ottoman subjects, with its employment policies during the several decades after its formation. The Debt Administration maintained an impressive payroll: in fiscal 1885, after shedding its responsibility for administering the tobacco monopoly, the organization employed 3,040 persons. 3 By 1892, its permanent staff had increased some fifty nine percent, to 4,835 persons and, by 1909, to 5,779 persons. Overall, in less than twenty-five years, the total number of full-time personnel almost doubled. And, the overwhelming majority of these employees were both Ottoman subjects and Muslims.4 Thus, it should be stressed, the Debt Administration did not create a large bureaucracy of foreigners that it brought in and imposed on the society. For example, Donald C. Blaisdell, European Financial Control in the Ottoman Empire: A Study of the Establishment, Activities and Significance of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (New York, 1929); A. Du Velay, Essai sur l'histoire financière de la Turquie (Paris, 1903) or, more recently, Jacques Thobie, Intérêts et impérialisme français dans l'empire ottoman (1895-1914) (Paris, 1977). 2 A different version of the present work is included in my "The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy 1800-1914: Towards a Social History Perspective," in Jochen Blaschke, ed., Jahrbuch zur Geschichte und Gesellschaft des Mittleren Orients (Berlin, forthcoming). 3 The employment statistics are found in the annual reports published by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. L'Administration de la Dette Publique Ottomane, Compte rendu du conseil d'administration, for the years 1888-1909 (Istanbul, 1889-1910). 4 Ibid.

138

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

In these facts—that it employed very few Europeans and that most of its Ottoman employees were Muslims— the Debt Administration took great pride, and frequently called them to the attention of Ottoman and foreign contemporaries. Indeed, the number of "foreigners" or "Europeans" on the Debt Administration payroll was very small and peaked at only 169 persons, just under three percent of its total workforce. And Muslims did account for 92-94% of all Debt Administration employees during the 1890s and some 88% thereafter. 5 The thousands of Muslims who found full-time jobs enjoyed good working conditions and were paid salaries on a regular basis, in contrast to members of the Ottoman civilian and military establishments at the time. Thus, they directly benefitted from and had a stake in the continuation of the foreign financial control represented by the Debt Administration. These employees constituted one group of Ottoman subjects personally benefitting from the European presence. While the Debt Administration hired mainly Muslims, a glimpse at the stratification of the workforce and changes in the composition of the workforce after 1899 shows a less rosy aspect of the organization's attitudes. Essentially, the Debt Administration did not trust its Muslim workforce. First, regarding stratification: although most employees were Ottoman Muslims, Europeans and non-Muslim Ottomans nearly monopolized the upper level ranks of the Debt Administration hierarchy. This pattern, with the Ottoman Muslims concentrated on the bottom, is identical to that of other European enterprises in the late Ottoman Empire. 6 Such stratification hardly was accidental and resulted from policies established by the Istanbul Board of Directors in the early days of die Debt Administration. In 1882, organization officials had warned of the dangers in collecting revenues "by means of foreigners" and ordered that "Oriental intermediaries" be hired to carry out the task. Hence, the Debt Administration recruited a primarily Muslim workforce. To supervise these Muslim "intermediaries", the European-manned board of directors hired "Turkish directors" that is, Muslims, as die executive officer in each administrative unit (nezaret). Each such unit, however, also had a comptroller, a critical post where the fiscal responsibility lay, and the Istanbul Board of Directors entrusted these crucial positions to Ottoman Christians. The Christian comptroller thus aided and advised the Muslim director and oversaw his behavior and activities.7 Second, in respect to die changing composition of the workforce: there was a relatively sharp drop in Muslim participation after 1899, a trend that is connected to the severe crisis experienced by Ottoman society during the years

'ibid.; Blaisdetl, Financial

Control, 6-7.

^Donald Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 18811908 (New York, 1983) Chapters II, III and IV, discuss workforce stratification in several European owned corporations in the Ottoman Empire. "j 'The London Times, 10/3'ltiK2, interview of Sir Edgar Vincent of the Debt Administration.

The Employment Policies of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration

139

1895 to 1899. A major cycle of violence erupted among the Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish communities during an era that also saw financial crisis, foreign war and natural disasters. The period included the armed attacks of Armenian revolutionaries on the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul, widespread Turkish and Kurdish reprisals and extensive intercommunal fighting in rural and urban areas. The Ottoman Empire fought a war with Greece and, in addition, there were droughts and crop failures in many regions. During this time, the Debt Administration shifted its hiring and personnel policy. Its official employment statistics indicate that it placed greater reliance on European and non-Muslim personnel after the crisis of 1895-1899 than it had in the preceding period. A comparison of these employee statistics for the periods 1896-1899 and 1900-1904 demonstrates that the absolute number of Muslims employed by the Debt Administration remained stable but that of non-Muslims rose markedly. Specifically, the number of Muslim employees increased by only three percent between 1896-1899 and 1900-1904 while the number of nonMuslims employed rose by thirty-nine percent and that of European employees jumped spectacularly, by one hundred and sixty-eight percent.8 Unfortunately, it is not known whether these increases reflect rises in the numbers of supervisory officials or of lower-rank personnel. This coincidence of crisis and Debt Administration emphasis on the hiring of Europeans and non-Muslims, moreover, was repeated during the period 19071908. As financial panic accompanied crop failures, bread riots, urban insurrections, strikes and Luddite-like risings shook the state and were followed by the Young Turk Revolution. It is significant that, at this critical time, the Debt Administration annual reports altogether abandoned their two decades' long practice of itemizing the respective numbers of European, Ottoman Muslim and Ottoman non-Muslim employees. Thereafter, the annual reports give only the number of European and Ottoman personnel, without differentiating Muslim and non-Muslims among the latter. The abandonment of die previous, more detailed, reporting practices contradicts the general trend towards increasingly elaborate and thorough accounting procedures employed by the Debt Administration (and the Ottoman government) and likely was not coincidental. The statistics presented by the Debt Administration do show that the number of European personnel increased ten percent during Hie 1907-1908 crises while the overall absolute number of its Ottoman employees declined slightly.9 If we review the trends in Debt Administration employment practices examined so far, we have seen, first of all, that the numbers of non-Muslim and o 9

Debt Administration annual reports cited in n. 3.

Ibid.; also, Donald Quataert, "The Economic Climate of the 'Young Turk Revolution' in 1908", The Journal of Modern History, On Demand Publication, D 1147, and my Social Disintegration discuss the deteriorating economic conditions of the period 1906-1908.

140

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

European employees rose during the 1895-1899 crisis and that of Muslim employees (relatively) fell. During the next crisis, of 1907-1908, the pattern of increases in the number of European employees is repeated. Given this record, and the timing of the change in bookkeeping methods, and the stated decline in the total number of Ottomans employed, we are justified in suspecting that the Debt Administration responded to the economic and political uncertainties of the latter era by increasing its non-Muslim and reducing its Muslim staff. 1 0 Overall, the impression gained is that when political conditions became particularly uncertain, as during the periods 1895-1899 and 1907-1908, the Debt Administration followed a policy of strengthening the European and Ottoman Christian elements of its workforce at the expense of the Muslim. The mechanics, justification and implementation of this policy need to be determined but its character seems clear enough. On the one hand, the general willingness of the Debt Administration to employ primarily Muslims suggests its realistic adaptation to the existing political-religious environment in the Ottoman Empire. But, on the other hand, the shifting employment practices of the organization display a fundamental mistrust of its Muslim employees. And finally, when the Debt Administration gave jobs to Ottoman Christians that it denied to or took away from "unreliable" Muslims, it exacerbated the alreadytense relations among the Ottoman ethnic-religious communities and thus furthered the destruction of the Ottoman social fabric.

' ^ C o m p a r e Debt Administration annual reports for 1907-1909 with those of the preceding yeiirs;

OTTOMAN WORKERS AND THE STATE 1826-1914

During most of Ottoman history, the state dominated the Ottoman working classes in an unequal relationship that limited workers' options and the methods they could employ to achieve their ends. At certain points, however, the Ottoman working classes were more successful in obtaining their demands, or at least had a greater potential for doing so. Wars enhanced their negotiating powers as the state relied on the guilds for logistical support. Similarly, when central authority weakened, guilds played a more important role in organizing and maintaining political life and social stability. The autonomy of workers and guilds seems to have reached a certain peak, for example, during the 18 th and early 19th centuries, when unsuccessful wars raged and the central state was especially feeble. In these years, urban guilds, workers and Janissaries presented common cause, employing uprisings and demonstrations, intimidating or toppling governments. 1 But when the Janissary Corps was eliminated in 1826 and state power mounted, the potential for these kinds of workers' actions became sharply curtailed. Thereafter workers' methods to obtain sought-after goals generally were less direct; but they were not always necessarily unsuccessful. This paper examines Ottoman urban workers between c. 1826 and 1914. It gives disproportionate attention to the period immediately following the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 because, at this time, state power weakened briefly, a lacuna that permitted unprecedented public, visible action by the workers. The history of the Ottoman urban working classs during the 19th century is not at all clear, even in its main lines. For example, the craft guilds sharply declined in economic importance but the significance of this development for the workers is not yet understood. During this century, urban workers, who numbered c. 250,000 in manufacturing alone, did not constitute a self-

'See, for example, Robert W. Olson, "The Esnaf and the Patrona Halil Rebellion of 1730: A Realignment in Ottoman Politics?" Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 17 (1974), 329-344 and his "Jews, Janissaries, Esnaf and the Revolt of 1740 in Istanbul: Social Upheaval and Political Realignment in the Ottoman Empire," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20 (1977), 185-207.

142

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

consciously organized group. These workers probably did not collectively share a sense of group consciousness. 2 But they formed a working class nonetheless: they earned their living from their labor, were identifiable to outsiders as a separate group and, as we will see, possessed and defended their own interests against encroachments from outside. A primary goal is to illuminate the ways in which these workers presented themselves when negotiating with their employers and the Ottoman state. Before proceeding further, several caveats are in order. This study is confined primarily to workers who were both urban and organized. Thus, the rural workers are excluded, not merely those in agriculture but also the many who engaged in part and full-time manufacturing in the countryside. These most likely numbered in the many hundreds of thousands. In addition, I have neglected those urban workers who formed neither guild nor union. Once again, this is a serious omission; the group was very large indeed; still worse, non-guild urban labor probably grew in importance during the 19th century. Also, this study stresses the actions of workers in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul (just as accounts of French workers sometimes are heavily weighted towards Paris) 3 Such omissions and emphases were hard to avoid and evolved from the sources employed here. Most of the documents presently available are governmentgenerated, from the upper echelons of the imperial administration, and concerned with the politically-sensitive capital city. On matters relating to labor, these documents treat—nearly exclusively in the materials that I have consulted during my fifteen year interest in the Ottoman workforce—guild organizations. Workers' groups outside the guilds are represented rarely and usually become visible only when posing some kind of security threat to the government.4 Unions and syndicates, for their part, have been almost-totally invisible in the government documents (hat I have consulted; they seem to have fallen outside standard official channels of communication. The emphasis on Istanbul also derives from its role as the publishing as well as the political capital of the empire. In the brief free press era after 1908, workers' organizations became visible, usually in the form of union-like bodies, concentrated in the capital and used local printers to publish their pamphlets, brochures and manifestos. This capital-city bias could become less pronounced if the field of Ottoman labor

2

P a u l Dumont, "À propos de la classe ouvrière' ottomane à la veille de la révolution jeune turque," Turcica, (1977). Also see the valuable Mete Tuncay, Turkiye'de sol ahmlar 1908-1925, 2nd ed. (Ankara, 1967). J 4

W i l l i a m Sewell. Work ami Revolution

iti France (Cambridge, 1980).

B u t there are many classifications in the Ba^bakanlik Ar$ivi (Prime Ministry Archives ), hereafter BBA, that have not been exploited systematically. These include Babi All Evrak Odast, Dahiliye and Zaptiye classifications, that cover the periods, c. 1890-1914, All subsequent archival references are from the Prime Ministry Archives.

Ottoman Workers and the State

143

history continues to mature and utilize local archival and published sources in the Ottoman provinces.5 Overall, we will see that workers fought a class war on two levels between 1826 and 1914. The first was on the level of language, using the language of the state and its elites to achieve goals and win victories and to protect themselves from being crushed by a state that always was more powerful. The second was on the level of direct action, violence in the workplace, a path that briefly had seemed likely to succeed between July and September 1908.

WORKERS

BEFORE

1908

Petitions presented to the government are the major source utilized here for understanding guild workers in the 19th century. The content of these petitions reveals much about how gmldsmen—19th century Ottoman guilds were overwhelmingly and probably exclusively male—represented their interests before government officials. Overall, the workers revealed in these documents range from proud and independent artisans to humble and demoralized suppliants. Many times the guilds appealed to tradition, for protection from changes that would ruin the property of poor subjects of the empire. Commonly, the petitioners asked the state for help on the grounds that their guild had worked in the craft for a long time. But, sometimes, the guildsmen requested the overthrow of tradition for their benefit, at another group's cost. Many guilds' petitions are quite matter of fact in approaching the state for action, pointing to existing regulations and requesting official enforcement of their rights, self-assuredly and confidently using the language of the state to obtain their objectives. For example, when confronted with rising demand for their products during the early 1860s, the tinners' guild responded by expanding the number of their shops. Normally, a certificate (gedik) was required to have a shop and their number was fixed by joint guild-government decision. In 1864, however, the guild petitioned that shops in a certain (the 6th) district of the capital be allowed to operate legally without a certificate. A year later, the shops were operating, but outside the law, because the government had failed to act. So, the guild again petitioned, stating that, in order to protect the certified shop owners from injustice, shops without certificates should pay double the fee that certified shops paid. This would be fair, the guild concluded, to certificate holders and the arrangement would bring the treasury some revenue as well. 6 The behavior of the tinners guild, incidentally, hardly suggests an ossified corporate The kadi court records (feriye skilled) hold much promise for breaking this bias. For a fuller treatment of the sources for Ottoman labor history, see my "Labor and Working Class History during the Late Ottoman Period, c. 1800-1914," Turkish Studies Association Bulletin (September 1991), 357-369. 6 BBA I MV 24162 with many enclosures from 1282/1865.

144

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

structure that rigidly limited production: in an expanding market, the guild was quite happy to improvise a way to get around the problem posed by the fixed number of certificates. This successful petition is not the appeal to existing rights that commonly appears in guild correspondence with the state. Rather, it, and many other petitions like it, requests a break, a deviation from standard practice. Therefore, this is additional evidence that the guilds were dynamic and evolving rather than stagnant and unchanging institutions. On other occasions, the petitioners were less assured; they appealed not to rights but for merciful intervention by a paternalist state. In 1866, to take one example, the historically-powerful and important Istanbul tanners' guild sought exemption from certain customs fees, imposed on hides that it imported from Egypt and America and levied again when the treated hides were re-shipped to other Ottoman areas. Such practices, the guild said, were unjust (not illegal), would drive the members from their livelihoods and should be repealed. Mixing appeals for mercy with those of state self-interest, the guild noted that favorable action would save an industry that supported many persons and provided revenue for the imperial treasury.7 In other cases, guildsmen altogether abandoned appeals to mutual interest and simply threw themselves on the mercy of the state. In 1865, die pipestem makers' guild wrote to Istanbul municipal authorities, saying that it had fallen on hard times and the number of workshops had decreased from 180 to 30. Most guild members were old and poor and couldn't pay the dues that legally were owed. In its response, noting the age of the workers, the government forgave payment of the taxes. 8 During the 1840s, a long dispute split the ranks of Istanbul silk cloth makers and dyers as some sought to maintain and others wanted to remove existing restrictive practices. The petitioners requesting continuation of monopolies stressed the importance of tradition and the need to prevent die masters, journeymen, apprentices and their families from going hungry . 9 A rare case concerning non-guild workers recorded persons from the district of Nev§ehir in central Anatolia who regularly labored in Istanbul. Most worked in the laundry business but several other occupations, such as boatmen, were included as well. In 1845, these persons banded together and collectively petitioned die state for exemption from a new income tax (temettU vergisi), pointing to the poor agriculture of their home districts. We are in poverty, they said, our families are poor, miserable and perplexed. 10 Thus, they appealed for mercy, not justice. These Nev§ehir migratory workers of different occupations mobilized on the basis of their common district of origin. In all of the guild examples, however, the workers mobilized on the basis of common 7

B B A I MV 25171, 12 ca 1283/1866.

8

B B A 1 MV 24072, 5 ra 1282/1865.

9

B B A 1 M V 505, 8 L 1257/1841.

10

B B A I MV 1289, 25 § 1261/1845.

Ottoman Workers and the State

145

occupation—as weavers of particular kinds of silk cloth, or as tanners or pipestem makers. Here, it seems appropriate to raise the issue of the relationship between worker identification by occupation and that by religion/ethnicity and under what conditions the latter overrode the former. This is a favorite theme in Ottoman and Middle East history, the role of religion and ethnicity as destructive elements in the process of working class formation. Many scholars, including the present author, correctly have pointed to the rise of inter-communal violence that started becoming prominent in the 1860s. There is no doubt that the practices of foreign merchants and the hiring policies of foreign corporations strongly influenced ethnic-religious relations. These firms routinely hired foreigners for the top jobs, foreigners and Ottoman Christians for the middle positions, and Muslims for the lower ranks. 11 In such circumstances, divisions among workers not surprisingly often assumed ethnic and religious overtones. But many guilds' petitions are in the name of the Muslim and nonMuslim guild of blank (esnaf blank islam ve reayya fukara kullari or die islamiyan ve zimmiyan fukara or the islam ve reayya lonca). Guilds commonly had mixed membership and multi-religious guilds were an ordinary and commonplace part of the 19th century economic scenery in Ottoman cities. In 1838, for example, fully 50 percent of some 68 enumerated Istanbul guilds, that possessed 28,000 workers, contained both Muslim and non-Muslim workers. 12 As a corollary, workers of different religions who labored together also mobilized to obtain redress of grievances. 13 There are, however, many instances in which members of multi-religious guilds temporarily left this ecumenical shelter to mobilize on religious lines. Let me offer three examples, the first an 1860 petition from an Istanbul grocers' guild. The petition, concerning changing coal prices, came from a normally religiously-mixed group and contained over 100 signatures. Every signature or seal was from a non-Muslim. 14 Second: in 1846, the Greek patriarch and the Christian merchants in the city of Aleppo mobilized to request reduced taxes on various textiles so that local industry could better compete with foreign goods. The petitioners cast themselves as representatives of the people (ahali) of Aleppo and sought aid to protect workers' families and children and to provide funds for the public treasury. 15 Third: twenty years later, in 1866, the Aleppo textile ^ D o n a l d Quataert, "Employment Policies of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, 18811909," in Wiener Zeitschrift fir die Kimde des Morgenlcmdes, 76 (1986), 233-237. 12 A n 1887 enumeration listed 287 guilds in the Istanbul area, listing the names and taxes due from the usta's, kal/a's and prak's in each one. BBA, I MM 4031, 12 cr 1304/March 1887. 13 Ebuzziya Tevfik, Yeni Osmanlilar cross-religious labor action.

Tarihi, III (Istanbul, 1974), 495-501, for details of an 1873

14

B B A I MV 19045, 17 XI 1276/1860.

15

B B A Cev lkt 2024, 11 L 1262/1846.

146

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

industry sent another petition, this one containing 39 seals (mtihtirs). In this case, however, the petitioners were all Muslims (except for one European) and there were no signatories from the non-Muslim community. Like their Christian predecessors in 1846, the petitioners spoke on behalf of a larger constituency, in this case the Muslims of Aleppo, and requested a reduction in customs duties. 16 At this point in the research, we do not know if such petitions by religious groups are a 19th century innovation or part of a long standing pattern. But, in these examples, we clearly are in the presence of porous boundaries between identification by religion and occupation, where primacy changes according to the particular circumstance. Many, likely most, of the unions that came into existence after 1908 were, multi-ethnic and multi-religious. An important example is the Salonica tobacco workers' union which had two branches in Salonica, one at Gevgeli and one at Kukus with total membership of 3,200. Sixty-three percent of the members were Jewish while Greeks, Muslims and Bulgarians formed the balance; among them, apparently, there were no visible ethnic tensions. 17 There is another interesting example, of two ethnically-homogenous unions merging to form a single, heterogenous organization. Originally, one union for Muslim commercial employees had been founded in the Muslim section of Istanbul and a second one in the Christian section. Each had met separately and each had elected assemblies. After perhaps a month, they united, with a new set of regulations and, to explain the new situation, a meeting was planned for Muslim employees only, in the Muslim quarter.18 It might be that we have been overstating the case for communal violence by too uncritically adopting the view of the European consuls and other Western observers who saw Turkish-Armenian or Muslim-Christian hostility behind every olive tree. We need to recall the instances of inter-communal economic cooperation, such as those seen above. We also must remember that when European contemporaries saw religious fanaticism, there often actually was mobilization and self-interested actions by workers. To explore this problem, let me offer an extended example from the early 1860s, when the British consul at Bursa in western Anatolia reported the destruction of an Armenian-owned silk factory in tliis famed silk production center. The town had just experienced a boom in silk factory building, followed by a sharp short term downswing in the business cycle. A "numerous mob... met in the Grand Mosque, excited by some fanatics among the ulema, softas or sheikhs, and after some pourparlers with the authorities who requested them to disperse", marched to the mill, pulled it down and "next set fire to the mass of leveled ruins." Throughout the report, the

16

B B A 1 MV 25281, 22 ca 1283/1866.

'^Stefan Velikov, "Sur le mouvement ouvrier et socialiste en Turquie après la Révolution JeuneTurque de 1908," Éludes Balkaniques, I, (1964), 29-48. lft [kdam, 2 September 1908.

Ottoman Workers and the State

147

British consul continuously referred to Muslim fanaticism, stirred up by construction of the mill over a former Muslim cemetery, as the root cause of the violence. Muslim sensibilities about cemeteries explicitly were offered as the explanation and the actors are identified by religious categories. But in the final lines of the report, the consul accidentally offers a different view of the affair. All (my stress) the silk mills of Bursa, he says, would be imperilled if decisive measures were not taken by the authorities. It was not the presence of the cemetery but of a downswing bringing low wages and unemployment that impelled a riot.19 Thus the actors here were not fanatics but workers who used the political language of Islam to defend their economic interests.

WORKERS

AFTER

1908

The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 has a double significance for the Ottoman labor historian. First, the ensuing freedom of the press affords details1 on workers' processions, petitions and perspectives that simply are not available in the official documents that presently are available for the pre-1908 era. For a time, the newspapers published announcements of workers' organizational meetings as well as of demonstrations and protests. These accounts are welcome but they do reflect the interests of newspaper editors that were, it can be assumed, different from those of the workers. Newspapers offering a perspective closer to that of workers did not appear until several years later. 20 By then, anti-strike legislation had been passed and the atmosphere was very different from the heady days of the autumn of 1908, when a new era really seemed to be at hand. This brings us to the second significance of July 1908. Ottoman (and foreign) workers had taken the revolutionary slogan at its word and assumed that "liberty" included the right to organize and to strike. Thus, in the months following the July 1908 coup, scores of unions and syndicates appeared and many struck. By one count, there were 104 strikes in 1908 alone. 21 By early 20th-century Middle East standards, this figure is impressive, particularly when you consider that the strikes began only in late July, after the Revolution had been achieved 2 2 Primarily propelled by demands for higher wages,23 these strikes sometimes were quite violent and literally terrified the regime.

' ®C>reat Britain, Foreign Office 195, reports of Consul Sandison from Bursa. 20See Tuncay, Sol akimlar for details. 21

§ehmus Giizel, "Faire la grève en Turquie," in A. Gokalp, ed.. La Turquie en Transition (Paris, 1986), 219. 71 When the strikes erupted, the Ottoman-language press routinely referred to them as tatil-i e$gal and sometimes the French grève. Neither term appears in the standard Ottoman lexicography, published by Redhouse in 1890 and reprinted in 1926, that only defines the word tatil. The relevant definitions offered therein are: "1. A making or letting be temporarily unemployed. 2. A making or letting work or duty be temporarily suspended; hence, a vacation." (563) [!]. 23 Elsewhere, I have noted the economic crisis and rising food prices preceding the July Revolution and the objective of most strikers to obtain higher wages in compensation. Donald

148

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman worker unrest had been building for some time. An 1889 law expressly had forbidden the formation of workers' associations, meaning Westernstyle unions and syndicates, anywhere in the empire. Passage of the law demonstrates government unease with such new and unfamiliar forms of labor organization that were emerging in the late 19th century era of direct foreign investment. Thus blocked, some workers formed mutual aid societies, for example, coal miners at Eregli on the Black Sea coast, workers for the Istanbul ferryboat company (§irketi Hayriye), as well as workers at the state-run Feshane and Hereke textile factories. Similarly, workers and employees of the vast Anatolian Railway Company established a mutual aid society in 1895. In July 1907, they pressed for wage increases. The late December 1907 formation of a pension fund for company officials, that excluded daily wage workers, suggests growing agitation as well as divisions within the workforce.24 When Ottoman workers struck in die months following the July Revolution, they usually obtained a good part of the demanded wage increases. In confronting the companies, the workers often sought the mediation of members of the revolutionary Committee of Union and Progress and from various government officials. Two Unionists, Ali Riza Tevfik Bey and Selim Sirri Bey were quite busy in this period, serving as mediators between many different groups of workers and the company managements.25 As a French-language paper approvingly noted: "The workers have confidence in this friend of the people [Ali Riza Tevfik Bey]." 26 The role of these mediators deserves to be stressed here. All were comparatively educated and from different social strata than the average Ottoman workers. But they publicly concurred in the workers' belief that wages had been too low and ought to be increased, a sentiment shared by the spokesman of the French Chamber of Commerce in Istanbul and dominant elements of die government. At this point, let me put forward two explanations as to why workers and elites agreed that wages were too low. In the first (for reasons discusscd in the conclusion below), state representatives, the foreign merchant community and die workers possessed a common understanding of what was fair and just. In die second explanation, the state and its agents are seen as seeking to impede workers' mobilization with a series of timely concessions designed to placate the bulk of the workers and isolate those pushing for radical change 27

Quataert, "The Economic Climate of the Young Turk Revolution' in 1908." Journal of History, (1979), D1147ft.

Modem

24 O y a Sencer, Titrkiye'de ifçi sinifi (Istanbul, 1969), 160 ; Anatolian Railway Company Annual Report for 1907.

For details on their lives see, Selim Sim (Tarcan), "Hâtiralanni" in Canh Tarihler, IV (Istanbul, 1946) and Miinise Basikoglu, "Babam Riza Tevfik," in Tarih ve Toplum, No. 57-63. My thanks to Y. S. Karakiçla for these references. 27

Stamboul cover story bv Régis Delbeuf, 15 August 1908.

See Donald Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman 1882-1908 (New York, 1983) for a fuller discussion.

Empire,

Ottoman Workers and the State

149

O T T O M A N W O R K E R S IN 1 9 0 8 : I M A G E S F R O M A B O V E The Istanbul press greeted the 1908 strikes with responses that ranged from paternalist disapproval to panic and hysteria growing from a conviction that they were witnessing days of anarchy and the impending collapse of organized society. The Ottoman-language paper Sabah, in mid-August 1908, complained that workers were insufficiently organized and seemed unable to appoint delegates to negotiate with managers and owners. Since there were no representatives, negotiations were impossible. The editors continued the lecture, opining that the ability to compete internationally was tied to the cheapness of wages and availability of capital. Since the Ottoman Empire lacked capital, local entrepreneurs paid higher interest rates than in Europe. High tariffs further raised costs. If, Sabah concluded, strikes increased workers' wages, there would be little difference between Ottoman and Western wages, and it would be impossible for Ottoman industry to compete. 28 In late August, the owner-editor of the French language Stamboul cautioned the workers against over-zealousness in the new age of liberty. Now is the time for everyone to work together in this grand endeavor; this is not the time to substitute class struggles for racial or religious wars. The workers know that the new regime favors them. But they shouldn't chase chimerics. It would be dangerous—it would be impossible—to destroy the social hierarchy . 2 9 By September, as the strike wave continued to mount, some of the foreign-language press in die capital began referring to an "Ottoman proletariat" that had the right to strike but not the right to prevent others from working. 30 In mid-month, when workers of several railway companies struck, they seem to have stirred up memories among some foreign-language journalists of the Reign of Terror, or July days in 1848, or perhaps of the Paris commune. It had to happen. Anarchy from below had to succeed anarchy from above. We have a workers' question... For twenty-four hours, we have been menaced by a class war . 31 The published memoirs of an Ottoman official afford another view from above. Mehmet Ali Ayni Bey was the chief administrative officer of a district in which important mines were located. At the end of August 1908, Mehmet Ali

Sabah, 18 Recep 1326/15 August 1908, signed by U$âkizade Halït Ziya. Stamboul, 29 August 1908, signed by Régis Delbeuf. 30 La Revue commerciale du Levant editorial of Septembre 1900 entitled "Les erreurs du prolétariat ottoman," 408-411. The stress is mine. This journal was the organ of the French Chamber of Commerce in Istanbul 29

31

Stamboul,

15 Septembre 1908.

150

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Ayni writes, he was ordered to the mines to restore order. The mine workers had menaced the foreign engineers and left work, demanding that the company director increase wages. Mehmed Ali Ayni arrived in the area and was met on the road by several thousand workers, led by a Kurd named Mevlud. Learning of his journey, the workers had rented a house for this state official and even had decorated its room with furniture, rugs and flowers! He met with the mine officials who accepted his recommendation to increase wages. Then Mehmet Ali Ayni met with Mevlud and the other ringleaders and, as they had coffee and tea together, he spoke of freedom, justice and equality. Mevlud and his friends agreed to return to work the next day.32 Can we believe this account, that was published in 1945, deep in the republican era of modern Turkey when labor and labor organizations were under very tight state wraps? Probably yes, although Mehmet Ali Ayni himself was a part of the republican Turkish elite that repressed workers. It is also likely that his memoirs record how he wished his readers to remember worker-state relations. Nonetheless, his account of workers' dependence on government officials for assistance fits very well with the contemporary newspaper accounts we have seen of Young Turk mediation efforts and with many guild petitions to the state. Thus, there seem to be two distinct views from above. For some members of the foreign press in Istanbul, Ottoman workers had emerging class interests distinct from and direatening to llie ruling strata. But for some in the Ottoman press and among the Young Turks, the view from above insisted that the state and die workers were cooperating to maintain equity and harmony.

THE

VOICES

WORKERS

IN

AND

S E L F - R HP R E S E N T A T I O N S

OF

OTTOMAN

1 sfOB

There certainly was no lack of worker violence in the post-revolutionary days. In a strike on the Aydin railway, there were open clashes between the military and workers and, in one exchange, a worker was killed and several wounded. 33 In strikes at the Eregli coal mines, workers destroyed several locomotives that hauled the coal while, somewhat later, striking miners wounded a foreign strike breaker 34

32

Mehmet Ali Ayni, Ccrnli Tarihler,

II (Istanbul, 1945), 59-61. The agreement then broke down

because of a foul-up within the Committee of Union and Progress. Also, Sencer, fftii sirnfi 194. 33

Ibid., 192-193, dates of 1 and 5 October 1908.

34

Quataen, Social

foreign worker*.

Disintegration,

64-65 and 75 for details on Kurdish workers assaults on

Ottoman Workers and the State

151

But if some used violence, other workers presented themselves quite differently. On July 27,1908, for example, a large procession was held in which some workers participated. The procession overall was led by two orchestras that alternately played the Hamidiye, the anthem of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. In the parade were cadets of the Naval School and students of the Admiralty Practical School; but there also were workers from the Arsenal and from the tobacco monopoly factory. Together, the groups, numbering some 5,000 persons— students and workers alike and all carrying Ottoman flags-marched to the Sublime Porte and the Ministry of War. Included were female workers from the tobacco factory, who participated in this demonstration at a distance, following the parade in carriages. In response to the procession, the Sultan sent his thanks. 35 There are photographs of striking railroad workers that show Ottoman labor in á similarly conciliatory light. As they halted a train near Aleppo, the strikers, for the camera, pointedly displayed the Ottoman flag, thus assuring all of their patriotism and commitment to the new constitutional regime. 36 About a month before this event, pharmacists had met in Istanbul to form the Ottoman Pharmaceutical Union. At their meeting, they first pledged allegiance to the Constitution. A band, provided by the Ministry of Marine (!) then opened with the Hamidiye March and, for good measure, played the hymn of liberty. Having established their patriotism beyond question, they opened the meeting and formed the new society. 37 In a like manner, during August 1908, some 2,000 workers and officials at die fez factory took oaths of loyalty in the presence of a member of the Committe of Union and Progress. 38 The nascent union of the Anatolian Railway workers and employees spoke loyally and reassuringly of the Ottoman nation (millet-i osmaniye). But, in the same breath, it informed the government of its intent to organize the union not only in the big cities of Istanbul, Bursa and Salónica, but everywhere in the empire. (This is the only reference found so far that shows workers aiming at empire-wide rather than geographicallycircumscribed organizations.) The implied threat of such an organization seems clear enough. 39 Railway workers' actions certainly provoked quick responses from the capital and the state. The government passed its first anti-strike legislation immediately after the great Anatolian Railway strike of 14-16 September 1908. 35

Stamboul, 28 Juillet 1908. L'Illustration, Samedi, 17 Octobre 1908. 37 Stamboul, 22 Août 1908. 38 Ikdam, various issues. This group seems to have formed when the "imprimeurs" of Istanbul met in the hall of the Société St. Blaise at Pera. Formation of syndicate of "typographes" and "lythographes d'imprimerie" of Istanbul also included a 200 member meeting in the hall of the Societa Operaia Italians. The president of the Ottoman Typesetters Association (MUrettebin Osmaniye Cemiyeti) at about this time filed a public notice that typesetters wishing to change jobs first had to obtain association permission. 39 Ikdam, 5 September 1908. 36

152

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Two comparatively extensive documents give intimate self-portraits of Ottoman workers during the fall of 1908. The first is a pamphlet published by the union of workers and employees of the Anatolian and Baghdad Railway Companies. Hie pamphlet was written in French and published in the European quarter of Istanbul. The second is a 1911 book indicting the administration of the Anatolian and Baghdad Railway Companies, written by A. Gabriel, former president of the union of company workers and employees.40 The published union pamphlet records a long list of demands put forward by the employees and workers of the Anatolian and Baghdad Railway Companies: these included recognition of their union, wage and salary increases, bonuses, protection for sick workers and double pay for night work. 41 But the focus of attention, at least that of the union leaders, shifted, beginning with a 17 August 1908 petition of 450 signatures42 and continuing at a 22 August 1908 meeting in a theatre near the Haydarpa§a station at the head of the line. Putting aside their other demands, the leadership insisted on the immediate dismissal of the company director, Edouard Huguenin. A subsequent and third general meeting of the new union was held due to die "increasingly aggressive and intransigent attitude" of Huguenin, and sought member support to demand his removal. The leaders spoke of "deplorable, despotic, tyrannical, humiliating and arbitrary conduct", a nineteen-year long reign of terror and tyranny. They first had appealed to the company as early as July 1907, because of the increasing cost of living, and had asked for consideration. But Huguenin, diey said, "has never deigned to listen to the cries of famine and has always remained deaf to all our prayers." Because their earlier appeal had "struck against a heart of bronze", the personnel had formed the union. Their goal was "not of disturbing work, order and discipline, but of appealing for justice and requesting an end to our suffering..." The provisional union committee that had been formed, they said, had managed to prevent a strike until now but "workers' suffering has reached the limits of its endurance." Therefore, the leadership put aside the other grievances and sent telegrams to the Grand Vizier, the Unionists, the German Ambassador, as well as to the Deutsche Bank administration in Berlin demanding the release of Huguenin as the sole means of obtaining calm. In response, a government representative stated that the Ottoman Constitution guaranteed the right of liberty, on die sole condition that it not encroach on the rights of others. It was legal to protest and demand 40

Compte-Rendu de la 3me Assemblée Générale du il Août 1908 of the Union des Employés du chemin de fer Ou. d'Anatoiie (Constantinople, Calata, 1908). A. Gabriel, Les dessous de l'administration des chemins de fer Ottoman d'Anatoiie et de Baghdad (Constantinople, 1911). There is an Ottoman Turkish version of the latter that 1 have not had the opportunity to consult. 41 Also see Gabriel, Les dessous, 183-188.

42 G a b r i e l , Les dessous, pamphlet cited in n. 40.

159-162 is the source for the petition. Otherwise, see the union

Ottoman Workers and the State

153

improvements, he said, but the union had no right to ask for a change of director. That was the business of the company and the Ottoman government. And, he closed, be patient, the company has promised favorable action on the wages issue. The union provisional committee responded with its own barrage of legalese: as legal body, it said, it had the right to demand that the company board of directors fire Huguenin. If it didn't, the union would call a extraordinary meeting of the shareholders to demand the dismissal both of Huguenin and the Council of Administration. The government must know that it is with great patriotic sentiment that we appreciate well how a railroad is an indispensable tool for the country, especially in die present conditions... The government must also know that we consider as sacred the property of all capitalists, Ottoman or nonOttoman, it can be assured that not one atom of this property will be lost. Before striking, the union leaders promised, they would explore every single legal avenue. For these reasons, we did not take any action against the law, good breeding, or against public security and tranquillity at the moment when M. Huguenin took his post... Huguenin effendi enjoys individual liberty as we all do... Huguenin effendi has added a last act to all his infamous deeds. He has styled our association and the personnel who comprise it as revolutionaries and anarchists. He has told the government that the Haydar Pa§a station is being transformed into a river of blood.43 Thus, the pamphlet shows the workers adroitly protecting themselves through a very careful use of accepted vocabulary regarding patriotism, capitalism, security and appeals for equity. On the one hand, they clearly informed the government that they knew how easily the railroad could be shut down and that its operations were at their mercy. On the other hand, having made their point, the workers quickly moved to reduce the chances of military repression by offering assurances of their loyalty and moderation. The book by A. Gabriel is a remarkable document, the only one of its kind that I have found. Published in 1911, it was part of a more widespread attack then taking place against foreign corporations, their autonomy within the Ottoman economy and their infringements on Ottoman sovereignty.44 In closing, the leadership thanked the newspapers Yeni Gazetta, la Patrie, la Turquie and Nea Ephimeris for their support. Also the Manzumei EfkSr for first bringing their grievances to the public. Signed by the committee of the union at Haydarpaja 31 August 1908. 44 GabrieI quotes 1910 statements made in the Ottoman Parliament as well as in the Jeune-Turc newspaper that support his efforts and those of the railway union, by then called an association in conformity with the anti-labor legislation of 1909.

154

Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

When he wrote the book, Gabriel was "ex-médecin du chemin de fer ottoman d'Anatolie" and former "président de l'Association fraternelle du personnel de ce chemin de fer." He had been president for more than two years (and may well have authored the 1908 union pamplet cited above) and had been an M.D for the railroad for sixteen years. The company, he said, had tried both intimidation and cooptation to keep him silent about unconstitutional abuses; when these failed, they fired him. He published the book with three stated goals: first, to bring about state intervention against the company directors; second, to prove to the general public and the commercial sector that the company was protecting its own interests at public cost; and finally, to reveal to the Berlin administration of the railroad and the German government itself that the Istanbulbased board was besmirching the German reputation.45 Thus, besides seeking to bring domestic pressure on the Istanbul administration of the railroad, he also was attempting to embarrass the Berlin government into forcing corporate changes more favorable to workers, such as those that social democracy (in its; compromise with Bismarck) had provided to German labor. In the book, company director Huguenin stands out as evil incarnate, a man who had failed to live up to the responsibilies of his office. For Gabriel, company directors as a class were not the enemy, but directors as individuals were. Thus, the first Anatolian Railway Company director, Kuhhnann, had been bad. (Kuhlmann has some notoriety in Ottoman labor history for stating that Ottoman workers didn't require high wages since they could get along on a few morsels of bread and some dried olives.) His successors Zander and Helferrich were good men but had failed to see that under their administrations Huguenin, who was hired in 1890, all the while had been amassing power from his lowerranking position. To bring down this tyrant, Gabriel collected a dossier that showed "one of the most cruel, inhuman, arbitrary" regimes imaginable.46 In the book, Gabriel keeps blaming personal avarice or greed, never stating that it was die nature of the company and of capitalism to seek profits and keep wages down Take, for example, his exposition of an 1899 compaiiy decision to pay an hourly rallier than daily wage and to obtain the hourly rate by dividing the daily wage by eleven. He attributes this to the personal qualities of Huguenin just as he blames the individual cruelty of a particular German section head for the practice of docking a worker a full hour's pay for being two minutes late 4 7 In print, Huguenin was this physician's heart of darkness. He is outraged that Huguenin and other directors gave free rail passes to their close friends and family and that the director had special trains for his own use and that of his family, not to mention the special pastry shops for high-ranking officials. While this is going on, he points out, the company offhandedly dismissed a 20-year

^ G a b r i e l , Les dessous, ii-\ 4

^Gabriel, Les dessous, 15)

47

Ibid. 110, 114.

Ottoman Workers and the State

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employee, with a large family, because the man had sent union correspondence over the rails without paying the necessary fee. 48 For years, Gabriel asserts, Huguenin amassed power, hiring and promoting fellow Swiss, carefully grooming and protecting the forward progress of each one. He claimed that ninety percent of all top company functionaries were fellow countrymen of the director. Huguenin hired his own father-in-law as a section head and tripled his salary in sixteen years. Corruption was everywhere; one section head hired by Huguenin was a deserter from German military service. Almost all section heads were corrupt or incompetent or both. The wage scales similarly were unjust. Swiss railway workers were paid more than workers on the Anatolian line and worse, the former were paid monthly while the latter received hourly wages. 49 In Switzerland, the state gives to the great, to the directors, enough according to their social station and to live in comfort, but it never forgets die weak Ues petits).50 That is, those in power have an obligation to those under them; in Switzerland but not die Ottoman Empire elites remembered this obligation. To bring about Ottoman state intervention, Gabriel gives many examples to prove that the company was cheating the government. He displays patriotic anger when revealing the details of bow the company repeatedly and illegally changed regulations to enhance profits at state expense. 51 (In these arguments, we can hear clear echoes of the guilds' assertions that measures beneficial to them also would provide increased revenues for the treasury.)52 Gabriel urged the state to greater vigilance in overseeing fulfillment of the concession agreements and stated that the Ministry of Public Works had been totally inept in policing the company. 53 A resident and subject of a state encrusted by over-legislation and government control, Gabriel insisted on legality. He emphasized the legal obligations of the company and the right of the state to enforce the agreed-upon provisions. He leaves the impression that hiring so many foreigners was reprehensible mainly because it was illegal. Here, he appears as particularly skilled in engaging in die discourse of the official Ottoman world. In his

Ibid., 32-37, 151. Elsewhere, Gabriel lets it slip that the worker in question w a s the vicepresident of the association/union, Ya§ar M e h m e t E f f e n d i , most probably a Muslim. Gabriel describes him as a 20-year chef de train, fired without cause when he sent a union letter without paying for it. Ibid., 168. 49

I b i d . , 134-137.

50

I b i d „ 137.

51

Ibid., 65-68, 74.

52

I b i d . , 96, 146.

53

I b i d „ 175.

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

arguments, the labor organization's right to exist did not rest on any a priori ground but rather because it satisfied the state's definitional requirements. Thus, he did not challenge passage of the anti-strike law, but instead helped the union to reorganize itself and obtain legal recognition as an association.54

CONCLUSION

On one level, Gabriel's obsession with Huguenin illustrates the tendency among workers and in general Ottoman society to personally hold accountable those in power. Thus, the Janissaries had demonstrated before the sultan or government ministers for redress of injustices, demanding the head or the resignation of individuals seen as responsible. Other examples illustrate this point. Hungry bread rioters in Sivas, in June 1908, sought to lynch the mayor and, when he escaped, they torched his home. 55 In 1903, mutinous troops angry over unpaid salaries beat up the Army Commander whom they held responsible. 56 Ottoman workers demanded fairness from tlieir supervisors and held them responsible when affairs went awry. Hence the demands for Huguenin's dismissal and, similarly, for example, the successful efforts of striking Istanbul tramway workers, in 1908, to obtain higher wages as well as the dismissal of the company director.57 Thus, there are strong elements of continuity in the ways that workers in guilds during the 19th century and those in unions after 1908 represented dieir interests before the state. The railway union's "prayers" for relief from "suffering" are the pleas of the "poor" and "old" prpestem makers and other guild workers whom life had "utterly destroyed" and who appealed to authorities for aid. We see similar behavior in a letter diat a group of Armenian silk mill workers sent, in 1910, to an Ottoman socialist newspaper Iftirak. The letter described their working conditions in terms that mixed working class consciousness with appeals for mercy. Written in Armenian and translated into Ottoman, the letter purported to represent 5,000 female workers in die silk mills at Bursa, in western Anatolia. It began wiili the now-familiar wails of woe. We are poor unfortunate women totally separated from the attentions of humanity and have fallen into poverty. ... No one pities us in our condition. We find pity in no one's heart.

f o r m a l l y r e c o g n i z e d the Ibid., 168-169. In 1910. the Council of State ($urayi Devlei) e m p l o y e e / w o r k e r group as an association but H u g u e n i n , according t o Gabriel, f a l s e l y w a s accusing the a s s o c i a t i o n s leadership of running a syndicate. This matter, Gabriel said, was before a court of appeal and he was confident there would be a favorable judgement. 55 Atatilrk Ansiklopedisi, I. (Istanbul, 1973), 404-405. 56 I b i d „ I, 397. S1

Tanm

#14, 1 Agustos 1124/14 August 1908, 3.

Ottoman Workers and the State

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They next presented a long list of grievances including poor pay, no rest periods, sexual abuse, physical abuse, terrible working conditions, and very long working hours. The letter then shifts gears, moves away from appeals for pity, and concludes with a demand for justice that recalls guilds' self-confident approaches to state authorities. Thus, all of us, Turk, Greek, Armenian and Jewish workers want an end to such conditions, we want an end to the practice of night work, this is our right. 58 Over the course of the 19th century, Ottoman workers were confronting a very poweful state with a mounting record of success against domestic challenges to its authority. The state had eliminated the Janissary protectors of the urban workers, it had coopted much of the ulema religious classes, curbed the power of local notables and crushed most of the tribes. Hence, the 19th-century guilds' circumspection in approaching die state and die careful manner in which they presented entreaties. Sometimes they spoke to the state's economic self-interest and often they blended appeals based on the government's sense of justice with those based on pity and mercy. The Young Turk Revolution seemed to workers (and many others) to be a chance to redress the internal balance of forces, in favor of those outside die state structure. The achievement of economic goals and even of corporate autonomy and power via the unions seemed to be within grasp. Many workers in the immediate post-revolutionary period continued to use the old successful methods of representing their interests by using the language of the state. Hence, the patriotic speeches and demonstrations. But some other workers during the July-September days of 1908 went further. The powerful railroad workers sprinkled protestations of loyalty and moderation among guarded warnings of their ability to disrupt. And some workers, believing that state repression would be withheld in the new age, turned to force and militantly confronted the government in pitched battles. But they were mistaken; gunboats, battalions and anti-strike laws crushed these strikers, curbed their paths of action and reasserted the domination of die state. Gabriel's fascinating book was written after this repression, that made clear the dangers of directly confronting the state. He is struggling to use language to protect what he can of labor's interests. He does this by seeking to divide the foes of die Ottoman working class. In attacking Huguenin personally and inviting his dismissal by the Istanbul board, the Berlin administration and the German government, he is attempting to divide foreign capital against itself. In demonstrating company violations of the concession, he is seeking to separate the interests of the Ottoman government and foreign capital and set one against the other And, in this struggle, he offers Ottoman labor as an ally.

5%

tpirak, #2, 20 §ubat 1325/5 March 1910.

PREMIÈRES FUMÉES D'USINE Some general factors favoring the development of industry in Salonica

Beginning in the mid 1880s, the city of Salonica experienced an expansion of its industrial infrastructure that was phenomenal by contemporary Ottoman standards. Within just a few years, the city came to possess a variety of factories and workshops that gave it, probably, first rank in the Ottoman world. This exceptional industrial growth owed much to a series of sweeping changes in transportation and communication, sectors that in turn were nourished by the expanding industrial economy. Railroads played a crucial role in the growth of the city, first reaching Salonica back in the early 1870s. Telegraphic linkages, for their part, emerged during the following decade. Other railroad lines were built between 1888 and 1896. One of these connected Salonica to the Ottoman capital at Istanbul while another tied the city to the Serbian network and thus to Europe. As the railhead of three lines that redirected die import-export trade of the southern Balkans through the city, Salonica boomed. Ship tonnage at the port of Salonica rose from one million tons in the 1880s to two million tons by 1912. At about this time, Salonica was tied for third place, along with Beirut, among Ottoman ports, surpassed only by Istanbul and Izmir diat were many times its size. Despite these huge increases in seaborne commerce, improvements in the port areas came very slowly. Financed by Western capital and carried out by Western corporations, construction of more modern facilities was retarded by two, quite different, forces. The first was the Ottoman state itself, that feared Western development of ports would lead to increased foreign control of the Ottoman economy and, perhaps, as in China, to extra-territorial port zones. In addition, merchants' efforts to streamline operations were checked by the Salonica porters' guilds. These workers, who were overwhelmingly Jewish, saw modernization neither as a blessing nor as progress, but rather as a threat to their jobs manually hauling freight. As in other

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Ottoman ports, the porters' guilds at Salónica prevented real improvements until the end of the century. Finally, in 1897, the Ottoman state yielded to foreign pressure to expand the port and gave a concession to a French firm. The expansion was completed by c. 1904. A few years later, ilie porters guilds were curbed further. In 1909, the Salónica Quay Company, the Oriental Railways Company and the Salonica-Constantinople Junction Railway Company signed an agreement making it possible for trains to run directly onto the quays, directly discharging to vessels in the port. Previously, the trains had stopped at the railway station and had their contents shipped over one kilometer of bad road to the port. The new arrangement certainly did make handling more efficient. But the porters who had carried the goods over that bad road now lost their jobs. Parallel to transportation improvements were changes in the systems of credit that facilitated a greater availability of capital for local would-be entrepreneurs. By the 1880s, although European firms had extended their credit limits up to eight months in duration, the measure failed to provide the capital needed. In 1888, the powerful Salónica firm of the Allatini Brothers joined with Vienna and Paris banks to found the Banque de Salonique, with capital of two million francs, a bank that would play an important role in the formation of many local industrial enterprises. During the following two decades, the Greekcontrolled Banque de Mytiléne opened a Salónica branch as did the Deutsche Orient Bank and the Beogradska Zadruga. The combination of improved transportation facilities with better credit set the stage for a remarkable industrial expansion.

INDUSTRIAL

DEVELOPMENT

AT S A L O N I C A .

1880-19

14

The city of Salónica and its predominantly Jewish population possessed long and proud traditions of manufacturing, both for local needs and those of distant customers. Perhaps best-known of all were the wool cloth makers. These artisans not only had clothed the famed Janissary Corps, the praetorian elite of the Ottoman military forces, but they also had exported additional and significant quantities of wool d o t h to Italy and France. By the early nineteenth century, however, the golden years of this industry had long past, thanks to the emergence of English and continental wool weavers who eventually outproduced their Salónica competitors. To make matters worse, the Ottoman state, in 1826, abolished the Janissary Corps, overnight eliminating the. major remaining market for the Salónica artisans. Consequently, the city's wool cloth industry fell sharply although it continued to retain some significance in subsequent decades. Salónica funneled wool cloth to ¡he Ottoman troops during the Crimean War; but, by then, the cloth was being made in outlying villages and no longer in the city itself. In the

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late 1880s, the province of Salonica held some 2,125 looms, located in villages, weaving various kinds of wool cloth for the military as well as for civilian buyers nearby and in Istanbul and Bulgaria. During the early part of the nineteenth century, cotton cloth production similarly hung on in districts outside of the city; during the late 1880s, some 1,650 looms still were operating at various locations in the province. Another famed product of the city—cotton towels and apparel for the public bath—also had suffered severely and dwindled to insignificance by the mid-nineteenth century. Thus, until the very late 1870s, the picture of Salonica industry can be summarized as follows. It generally was low-technology and dispersed in the countryside, where the labor costs were less. Local manufacturers barely were managing to survive. Most exports from the region consisted of raw materials, such as raw wool and cotton, that no longer were needed by local manufacturers as they once had been. Thereafter, however, this gloomy picture quickly gave way to one of recovery, dynamism and growth. In order to give a general idea about diis reversal and the subsequent burst of manufacturing activity, let me begin by summarizing a list of new manufactories that were founded in just five years, during the period 1878-1883. Altogether, in this brief time span, there were some thirty new workshops and factories founded in Salonica and its hinterland, of radically-different sizes and degrees of technological sophistication. These newly-founded establishments included: a distillery, six soap factories, a brick factory, another making nails from imported wire, a factory making iron bedsteads; four workshops handproducing chairs, three macaroni factories and ten flour mills, as well as two cotton spinning mills. Virtually all of these establishments and the factories subsequently founded at Salonica (with the notable exception of the tobacco industry) served to promote the autonomy of the city's economy. That is, most of the new industries focused on serving the local market, replacing foreign-made products with Salonica-made goods in the homes of city and area residents. During the early 1880s, several large workshops opened in the city, producing knitted goods and flannel shirts. In addition, and of greater significance, local production of coarse wool cloth began to increase sharply. As local weavers' demands for raw materials mounted, once-significant exports of raw wool from Salonica fell off sharply and were re-directed to meeting local needs. In fact, the city even began to import raw wool in order to supply weavers who produced clodi for die Ottoman army and, secondarily, for the civilian population. The number of wool weaving factories increased sharply in the early twentieth century and, at first, these establishments were filled with hand looms. A cottage industry supplied various wool cloths, using French and German wool yarn. Typically, such a business had several looms and very simple presses. Mechanization came very late. In 1908, several small mechanized factories

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

opened. A small mill opened, with five looms from Bielefeld, making a highquality dyed and finished wool cloth for the Ottoman government. A second mechanized mill opened in 1911 with 30 looms, a joint stock company financed by Salónica Jews. The enterprise, however, quickly went under. Salónica also held a jute weaving mill that the Torres, Misrachi and Fernandez families opened in 1906. This factory burnt down two years later, an event that was seen as advantageous to the owners. It later reopened in 1909, with 60 looms and more modern equipment that made sacks for the tobacco industry. A fez factory opened in 1908 and shared the fate of the jute mill, burning down almost immediately. Unlike the jute factory, however, the fez factory was not rebuilt. The expansion in wool cloth production at Salónica late in the nineteenth century was paralleled by rising cotton textile output. At the turn of the century, the city contained numerous, but uncounted small weaving workshops, holding just two-three looms and making cotton socks (as well as wool shirts and shawls). Locally-made socks, an imitation of French goods, sold for a very cheap price and substantially reduced the level of imports. In the early twentieth century, the wtímen's ready-made garment industry significantly expanded output, employ ing hundreds of female workers. The Salónica area also enjoyed substantial increases in cotton yam production late in the century, thanks to the formation of a network of mechanized cotton mills. Salónica and the Macedonian interior came to possess, by c. 1900, the densest concentration of mechanized cotton spinning mills in the Ottoman world. The oldest of these mills, located at Niausta, dated back to the 1870s while five others were founded after 1900. There were ten such mills in Macedonia overall on the eve of World War I. Three of them were in Salónica itself, containing a full one-third of the 60,000 spindles in the ten mills overall. Two of the Salónica yarn-making factories opened in 1878 and 1885. The first was built by a group including Schalon Sayas and Ripote; this later was taken over by I. Sydes and Company. Torres, Misrachi and Company opened the second spinning mill, to be later succeeded by the Société Anonyme Ottomane Nouvelle Filature de Salonique. Both exclusively used English equipment. By 1909, a third steam-powered mill had opened in the city but was not Jewishoperated. In the late 1880s, these factories received Ottoman governmental tax exemptions to help improve their competitive position. The Torres-Misrachi mill was enlarged in 1886 and again in 1890 and, a decade later, was said to possess the newest equipment, of English origin. In 1905, the firm was converted into a joint stock company. In contrast to Jewish domination of the Salonica-based spinning industry, Ottoman Greeks owned all of the mills outside the town. These were located1 in Niausta, Karaferia and Wodena. No spinning mill was owned by a single party; instead, multiple owners spread the risks. Members of the owners' families often worked in the mills, sometimes in managerial posts but also on the production line.

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Quite late in the period, c. 1913, six of the seven Greek-owned cotton spinning mills of the interior formed a syndicate, with the goal to control the market. It is likely that the effort was part of the mounting inter-ethnic warfare ravaging the Ottoman lands, in this case, a Greek drive to eliminate Jewish competition. The proliferation of spinning mills promoted a vast expansion in cotton cultivation in Macedonia, an upsurge noticeable by the mid 1880s. The Salonica mills produced for an extensive market and successfully competed against Italian and English yam of certain qualities, the coarser threads. These mills, at the turn of the century, provided about one-quarter of all cotton yarn consumed in the Salonica region; the balance came from England, Italy and Austria. About one-third of their output went to Macedonia and Albania; they shipped the balance to Serbia, Anatolia, the Aegean islands and Bulgaria—a market lost when it became independent of Ottoman control after 1908. As early as 1885, the Anatolian Aegean port of Izmir was importing 650 bales of cotton yarn spun at Salonica. The Salonica mills generally found it difficult to compete with factories in the interior. In fact, c. 1900, the mill owned by Sayas and partners, that still was operating with its original equipment, closed down for several years, some say as many as seven years. Production costs of die Salonica mills were higher because they used coal to run their steam engines; their Macedonian competitors, by contrast, used water power that was less reliable but cheaper. Some of these water-powered mills added turbine engines while the steam mills at Salonica failed to modernize and continued to work with tired and outdated equipment. Also, land values in the city were higher than in the countryside, further raising overhead costs. The booming tobacco industry also hurt the spinning industry, by drawing off the cheap female labor on which the yarn factories depended. More generally, Salonica workers during the post-1885 boom had a variety of employment options, unlike workers in the interior who had few other wageearning alternatives to yarn factory labor. In addition, as we shall see, Salonica workers were better organized than their Macedonian counterparts. As a result of all these factors, the wages of Salonica yarn factory workers in 1913 were as much as three times those of Macedonian girls working in the Karaferia, Niausta and Wodena mills. The silk reeling industry long had been famed in the city but faded in importance and essentially disappeared during the general late nineteenth century boom in the Salonica economy. Among Ottoman silk producers, those at Salonica had been the first, back in 1829, to adopt Western-technology, to make silk thread that European factories could use in weaving cloth. By the late 1840s, Salonica had contained some 30 modern spinning mills, employing perhaps 1,000 reelers and containing several hundred reeling machines. While the oldstyle mills exclusively had been controlled by lews, Italians played a key role in introducing this new Western-derived technology. Although the new mills were

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very successful, Salónica residents complained about the air pollution they caused, prompting the local authorities to restrict additional factory construction to the areas outside of the city walls. Thus, by the early 1860s, the number of filatures in the city had declined to 19 with 791 reels but surrounding villages held nearly as many, some 15 additional reeling factories. Most were owned or rented by foreigners and no longer by local Jews. As mechanized silk reeling became familiar to residents of the city and its environs, the silk industry at Salónica and in the rest of the Ottoman empire was beset by a series of crises. Diseases affecting silkworms spread from France to the Middle East just as East Asia began exporting massive quantities of silk to Europe. Salónica and overall Ottoman raw silk production collapsed for decades and then recovered, thanks to the discoveries of Louis Pasteur (that showed how to control the silkworm disease) and to strong international demand. Two rather large silk factories at Salónica and six much smaller ones in nearby villages survived into the late 1880s. As Salónica entered its period of unprecedented industrial growth, with die proliferation of so many different kinds of factories, the Ottoman Public Administration founded a model silk reeling factory at nearby Gevgeli, setting an example it hoped local capitalists and would-be entrepreneurs would follow. The silk spinning mill, leased to the Parisian firm of Boutet Frferes, was comparatively large, with 300 spindles, and contained the most modern equipment. Despite these efforts and contrary to the generallyfavorable business climate, silk reeling in the Salónica region and in die city virtually disappeared. Why? The apparent paradox derives from the nature of the silk reeling industry and the booming Salónica economy of the late nineteenth century. More than in most enterprises, capitalists in silk reeling relied on cheap wages to remain competitive. Silk reelers were the worst-paid of all Ottoman textile workers who in turn received the lowest wages of Ottoman industrial workers in general. As we will see in more detail in the section on workers, the late nineteenth century factory proliferation in Salónica pushed wages upwards to the point where local silk reeling become uncompetitive. That is, the general prosperity and multiplication of local factories doomed any revival of the Salónica silk industry, even when well-capitalized. For example, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration reeling mill at Gevgeli was undermined by the higher wages that a nearby tobacco factory paid to its 600 workers. If silk reeling declined, tobacco production and processing acquired major significance. In the early twentieth century, the European provinces accounted for one-half to two-thirds of the substantial tobacco exports from the Ottoman empire. During the period of interest here, tobacco exports skyrocketed, largely thanks to the seemingly-insatiable demands of the American Tobacco Company. Between 1892 and 1909, for example, tobacco exports from the European areas

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rose a lull 250 percent! The center of the industry was outside of Salonica proper, in the Kavalla district that accounted for the vast majority of tobacco exports from the European provinces. But Salonica accounted for about one-fiflh of the tobacco processed and contained one of the most important cigarette-making factories in the empire. In 1883, at Salonica, the factory of the tobacco monopoly daily was producing 100,000 machine-made cigarettes. In the late 1880s, annual cigarette output was growing steadily and reached some 16 million pieces in 1890. Some of the new factories in Salonica produced durable goods. During the late 1880s, a group of skilled blacksmiths worked in the city, mainly Armenians and Greeks who had learned the craft from English shops or railroad yards in Ottoman Istanbul. In 1900, a local stock company was formed to modernize the existing iron foundries, repair shops and sheet metal shops. Founded by local Jews, the company liand-produced substantial quantities of cheap sheet metal articles, such as tin cans and lamp stands. Copper working was far more important and shops in the city annually worked a reported 100,000 tons of the metal. In 1887, a Frenchman was brought in to establish a copper foundry but failed in the effort. On the other hand, the city did possess a successful brass foundry towards the end of the period. At about the same time, that is, around the turn of the century, an Armenian opened a workshop and began manufacturing machinery replacement parts, including motors, transmissions and agricultural machinery. By 1907, the city held three smelters. Thus, the Salonica economy began achieving some measure of independence from its previous reliance on imports to maintain its industrial infrastructure. An Allatini factory since c. 1883 produced common building bricks and good quality roof tiles, supplying European Turkey as well as the archipelago. In 1905, the factory, using clay earth drawn from a site several kilometers outside the city, doubled its output but still was unable to meet soaring demand. The city then held a second brick works, making hand-pressed bricks slightly below the quality of die Allatini factory. Within two years, however, four large works in the city were producing hand-made bricks. Many of the factories focused on the production of foods and beverages. Overall, output of the various comestibles increased sharply in the early twentieth century, particularly after 1906. The Allatini flour mill usually was singled out as the most important of the food processing factories. Originally founded in 1857, it later was taken over by the Allatini group, in conjunction with the French company Grand Moulins de Corbeil. It had been expanded arid modernized after a fire in 1898, so that its new facilities were considered exemplary. In 1902, die mill produced a reported 28,000 tons of flour and found buyers mainly in the city and its hinterlands, but also as far away as Beirut. In addition, two small mills producing an inferior flour helped to supply the city's

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

needs. The Ailatini mill expanded again in 1906, now holding a 650 horsepower steam engine from Italy and annually produced 49,000 kgs of flour, up sharply from the levels just four years earlier. Although the mill possessed quite-up-todate equipment, it suffered from a poor location—away from rail lines and the port—for most of its history. Construction of a small pier and a silp with an elevator helped, but locational disadvantages remained. More seriously, the mill suffered from the general underdevelopment of the Ottoman empire. In common with flour mills in other cities such as Istanbul, the Ailatini mill relied on domestic wheat only with some risk: Ottoman cultivators did not clean the grain sufficiently for proper use in the modern equipment of these flour mills. Ironically, the Ailatini (and other mills) usually preferred to buy foreign grain, thus abandoning the advantage given by relative proximity to the Macedonian grain fields. For those with a sweet tooth, the city held three large and modern candymaking plants in 1907, often sold in the Macedonian interior. Two macaroni factories opened in the city in 1906; one was steam-powered and produced a high quality product. Those seeking 3 mild alcoholic haze were obliged by the firm of Modiano, Fernandez and Company who opened their Olympos brewery. Just prior to World War I, the brewery incorporated as the Société Anonyme Brasserie Olympos, run by the firm of Misrachi, Fernandez and Company. In the early twentieth century, Ilie brewery was exporting to Istanbul and Izmir but mainly supplied local buyers. This brewery, in common with the Ailatini flour mill, considerably increased its productive capacity; it often used Zonguldak coal to fire its modern steam engine and, after 1908, added a central electric capability. A second Salónica brewery opened between 1909 and 1913, financed by four Greek partners who sought to use national appeals to attract Greek customers away from the Jewish-run Olympos brewery. Different thirsts were met in 1906 and 1907 when two soda water factories opened their doors. To cool things off, the Olympos brewery contained a section that produced ice. The ice factory section of operations daily produced ten tons of ice in 1900, part of which was sold to ships in port. By 1906, two Salónica workshops were producing iceboxes, a comparative luxury good at the time. A new soap factory opened c. 1901, replacing the lesser quality soaps imported from Marseilles, Mytilene and Crete. A year later, local perfume factories were re-capitalized and began underpricing imported extracts, powders and soaps. These manufacturers sold their wares both in Salónica and in Istanbul, Izmir and Beirut. In 1907, Salónica held seven soapmaking firms, with daily production estimated at c. 160,000 kgs. During the early 1880s, some Greeks and Maltese opened workshops to make chairs that formerly had been imported. In 1905, the city also possessed a very busy furniture factory, employing some 50-70 workers, that expanded operations in subsequent years. By 1907, there were three such workshops. In addition, there was a wood working factory with seventy employees. There were two tanneries in the city until 1907, when Nouchia Fils opened a third, together with eight

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partners. Four years later, 1911, the firm of Calderon and Arvesti in Salonica opened the only shoe factory in the European provinces of the empire. Working solely for military contracts, the factory's 75 machines produced up to 600 pairs of boots daily. To this inventory, we need to add the five book printers that operated in the city c. 1906, all using good equipment and producing school books in Ottoman, Greek, and Bulgarian and newspapers in Ottoman, Greek, French and Hebrew. Workshops in the city also produced sun and rain umbrellas, artificial flowers, wagons, cement, raki, cognac and rum.

THE

ENTREPRENEURS

Groups working to promote the industrial development of late nineteenth century Salonica included the Ottoman state as well as foreign and local merchants. Efforts by the Istanbul government to increase import duties afforded some protection to local manufacturers and certainly helped local entrepreneurs in their efforts to supplant foreign manufacturers by establishing import substitution industries. Similarly, a long-standing state policy exempted industrial machinery from import duties, offering some assistance as well. The help given by the Ottoman state in actual industrial development mainly derived from the captive market it offered various textile and boot producers. Otherwise, its was a comparatively minor part, including an industrial school founded to promote and disseminate modern industrial techniques. This modest operation had its own locksmith and wood working shop and offered instruction in weaving and spinning. Industrial entrepreneurship at Salonica displayed many of the weaknesses prevalent elsewhere in the Ottoman lands. Overall, although there were many skilled merchants, there were too few capitalists and still fewer industrialists. For industrial development, foreigner observers argued, one needed capital, entrepreneurial spirit, product knowledge and skill in procurement. In the Ottoman lands, die tendency during the nineteenth century was to form partnerships where one person provided the ideas, another the technical knowledge, another the skills in obtaining raw materials and selling the product. And all contributed a little cash. There was a real failure to have an overview of the market, whether regional or national. The Salonica experience in some respects followed the more general Ottoman pattern in that merchant capital provided the funds for the factories. Thus, Salonica and Monastir merchants opened the new cloth factory in Salonica. Another Salonica merchant was a partner in a Niausta cloth factory while a Salonica rope merchant sought, unsuccessfully, to found a rope factory at

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Wodena. Similarly leather merchants owned the leather factories of Salonica (and some in Istanbul). Hie flour mills in Salonica as well as in most Ottoman cities (such as Monastir, Prischtina, Uskiip, Edirne and Dedeaga?) all owed their existence to the efforts of grain merchants. In the Ottoman empire, various ethnic and religious groups alternated in playing the preeminent role. Depending on the region, industrial leadership in the European provinces of the Ottoman empire fell to one or another ethnic or religious group. Greeks generally formed the main group of industrial entrepreneurs and controlled the industrial centers of Karaferia, Niausta and Wodena. In Uskiip and its environs, Albanians owned almost all the larger factories. Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Russo-Wallachians usually operated only small businesses. Salonica was unique in the Ottoman empire in the sense that the majority of its factory founders were Jewish. The most prominent of these was the Allatini family, surely the mosl well-known and important industrial entrepreneurial group in the European provinces of the empire. Important for their activities in flour and silk., tlu Allatinis' fortune was based on agricultural exports. Using this wealth, tlu family moved into steam-flour milling in c. 1857; several decades later, family members opened a steam-powered brick factory in the city, modernizing it in the 1890s with Italian technical management. The Allatini family earlier hac monopolized the export of tobacco from most Macedonian districts to Salonica handling the greatest part of the business. From the middle of the 1880s, foreigi merchants—Hungarian, American and others—began to play a more decisive roll and started displacing local houses. In 1895, the Allatini house responded b; founding the Commercial Company of Salonica, Ltd., to finance its tobaccc trade. With this new tool, the family remained the second-largest house in th< tobacco industry, after the Hungarian firm of Herzog and Company. Salonica Jewish merchants—Capandji, Jaliiel and Benussan—were tin primary backers of a large cloth factory, dated 1911, that was founded in Niausti as a joint stock company. Other prominent Jewish families, notably tin Misrachi, Fernandez and Torres families, also were important in Salonica factor; formation. The Allatini family allied itself first with the Fernandez and Misrach families and later created marriage alliances with the Torres. Their factorie: almost always involved several partners although they became more involved ii stock companies after 1908.

THE

WORKERS

Thanks to its broad manufacturing base, Salonica possessed an unusually heavy concentration of industrial workers. In the early twentieth century

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according to one estimate, there were some 20,000 workers employed in Salónica manufacturing and an additional 5,000 persons working in the transportation sector. Altogether, this accounted for perhaps 17 percent of the total Salónica population—women, men and children—at the time. We know surprisingly little about the workers and working conditions. Many of the factory directors and managers were foreigners, imported by the entrepreneurs. Thus, in the cotton spinning mills, the managers were from England, directing each of the two cotton spinning mills operating during the 1880s and 1890s. In compensation, they were provided with lodging and comparatively high salaries, of 350 pounds sterling/year. Similarly, a British subject managed the tobacco monopoly factory in the early 1890s. At the Allatini brick works, Italian nationals directed operations. Earlier in the century, similarly, residents of the Italian peninsula had been imported to run many of the silk reeling mills. Most of the workers, however, were drawn from the local population. Female labor played a very important role overall and, because it was cheaper, was used whenever possible. The various textile workshops held 8-20 female workers. In the cotton spinning mills within the city during the 1880s, all of the workers were Jews, numbering some 800 at the time (while elsewhere in the region they were Greek, except for the Bulgarian workers at the Wodena mill). Three-quarters of these Salónica mill workers were girls, 12-18 years of age and they received starting wages that were a full fifty percent less than that paid to the boys who worked in these factories. The workday was from dawn until dusk, year-round. Thus, spinners worked for fifteen hours in the summer and ten hours in the winter. They received a thirty-five minute break for dinner but no time for breakfast. Sometimes the girls quit factory work after accumulating a cash dowry but usually they labored in the mills until marriage; for Jewish Salónica girls, this meant until about the age of fifteen years. The Allatini brick factory, including the clay earth quarry, employed c. 200 workers; youths daily received 10 piasters in c. 1912 while others received 16-18 piasters. Mostly Greeks and Bulgarians were employed. Their employment is worth stressing since some observers of the Middle Eastern economy like to argue that entrepreneurs of a particular ethnic or religious group hired only workers from that same group. There were real advantages in following this custom, notably, a certain assured access to labor. But, as we see here, the practice was not always observed. In the case of this Jewish-owned brick factory, the management chose to employ workers of a different religion. There was a similar pattern at the Jewish-owned Olympos brewery that, in 1912, employed c. 80 workers. The workers in the machine departments usually were Greeks while Bulgarians toiled in the malting and brewing operations and ran the taverns as well. Jews and Bulgarians, for their part, dominated the bottling tasks. In

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Salonica, (lie silk factories in 1889 employed 450 workers. The shoe factory tha opened in 1911 employed some 60 workers of unknown gender and ethnicity The Allatini milling operations in its various phases employed 100 persons, 2( of them actually inside the mill in 1912. Tobacco handling and processing easil; was the largest-single employer at Salonica. Some 4-5,000 persons there (a: compared to at least 15,000 workers in the Kavalla district and another 5,000 it the Xanthi district) sorted and packaged tobacco. In numerous workshops, the; broke apart the baled tobacco shipped by the cultivators and then re-sorted and re packaged it by color and quality. In some districts such as Xanthi, mostly mei worked while at Kavalla, tobacco manipulators where almost evenly divided b; gender. Women were the overwhelming majority in the Salonica workshops. Ii addition to these workers were the cigarette makers of the tobacco monopol factory ; in 1883, it had 250 workers, mostly Jewish. In 1891, there were fiftee foremen supervising 300 tobacco manipulators, two-tliirds of diem were femal and 270 were Jewish. Sixty Greeks and Bulgarians, 83 percent female, als worked in the factory, along with five Turkish guards. The workday was nin hours in length and die women received 50 percent or less in wages than th men. Altogether, there were 335 workers, 90 percent of diem Jewish. A unique cluster of factors came together in Salonica in the lat nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pushing up wages and creating a labc militancy and degree of labor organization unparalleled in the Ottoman cmpiri The Salonica workers, without question, formed the most politically-awai working class group in the Ottoman empire. Wages for Salonica workers bega rising late in the nineteenth century, after c. 1896. In part they improved becaus of a general increase in Ottoman prices and the consequent, more sluggish, ris in wages following the end of the world-wide price depression of 1873-1896. Bi wages at Salonica rose more than elsewhere in the Ottoman empire because i particular local conditions. In 1906, wages already had risen to 5-8 piasters ft unskilled male workers and 15 piasters for skilled male labor; women and girl; however, received only 3 to 8 piasters. Workers hurt by inflation after 189 struck in the factories of the tobacco monopoly in 1904; similarly, shoemakei (cordonnier) also struck in that same year while textile workers walked out i 1905, followed by Allatini brick factory workers in 1906. The rapid rise in th number of factories of all kinds placed a premium on workers; and employei soon found themselves bidding up wages in an effort to obtain labor. Details ai lacking; but it is clear that workers moved from one factory to another i response to better wage opportunities. As international demand and prices ft Ottoman tobacco soared at the century's end, die local tobacco industry coul afford to pay wages tliat were much higher than those offered by other faclorie.' Thus, both die cotton spinning mills and the silk reeling mills in Salonica fe into decline, unable to pay the higher wage levels necessary to attract and retai workers. The sharp rises in tobacco production and export, that triggered wag

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increases for workers, played a decisive role in the mounting militancy of Salonica workers. The Young Turk Revolution of July 1908, that brought constitutional government, promised new opportunities and freedoms to Ottoman workers. The following weeks were filled with hundreds of strikes for higher wages, successful labor actions that quickly led to repressive countermeasures by the Ottoman government. Virtualy every category of labor in the empire was involved in the agitation: textile workers, waiters, barbers, railroad workers, pharmacists, department store clerks and stevedores—the list goes on—demanded and received higher wages. Pay for unskilled workers at the Olympos brewery had been 7-8 piasters but rose to 11 and later 12 piasters with strikes. In 1909, after a two week lock-out, workers in the AUatini flour mill obtained impressive wage increases, from 10-11 piasters to c. 15 piasters. By 1913, the average wage for women labor in Salonica was not less than 7 piasters, more than twice the minimum levels of 1906. The situation of Salonica workers then was improved by yet another major trend of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the emigration of Ottoman subjects. In part, this migration flowed from a general pattern in the Mediterranean basin as Sicilians and other Italians and Greeks flooded to the New World. But in the Ottoman lands, this migration was given new impetus by the conscription laws of the Young Turk administration that, for the first time really, made Ottoman Christians (and Jews) subject to military service. In response, vast numbers of Christian Ottomans—Greeks, Armenians, Lebanese— fled from the opportunity and the empire. Whereas previously there had been an excess of workers in Salonica, real labor shortages now emerged. This tendency was exacerbated, I should repeat, by labor demands in the booming tobacco sector. Thus, Salonica workers were in an exceptionally strong position. In a movement that had begun before the 1908 Revolution and thereafter acquired exceptional momentum, many workers in Salonica formed labor unions and syndicates to articulate their grievances. By 1910, the important unions at Salonica included those of tobacco workers, of cotton spinners, of porters, of workers on the Salonica-Monastir railway while those of joiners, jute spinners, waiters, shoemakers and cigarette paper workers were said to be in a state of formation. Many workers organizations were not class-based. Thus, for example, the Jewish wood workers (menuisiers) were led by the owners of the ateliers while a doctor led the Greek tailors' union. National antagonisms, it is clear, fatally flawed the actions of most groups, blocking unity by class and preventing

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Change in the Ottoman

Empire

worker solidarity. For the Ottoman Greeks, national questions consistently took precedence over labor and socialist considerations. But Salónica became the center of the most successful efforts in the Ottoman world to overcome national differences and was remarkable for the strength of its socialist organizations. The comparatively high degree of union organization among Salónica workers and the precocious development of socialism among them certainly derives in part from the unusually-favorable local conditions: high wages triggered by the boom in tobacco combining with shortages, of workers caused by general industrial growth and emigration. The character of the Salónica labor movement also owed much to comparatively high levels of literacy that derived from Ottoman state efforts, from those of the various religious communities, and die programs of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, The particular form of labor militancy owed a great deal to the location of the city and its role as a transportation center, with links to western Europe and the various Balkan states. Its proximity and excellent rail links promoted the flow of ideas from Bulgaria, with its rich social democratic tradition, as well as Austria-Hungary, Germany and points further north and west. Salónica led the way in introducing progressive ideologies into the Ottoman empire. A vital core of socialist activity, that gave Salónica socialism its unique quality, rested among the Jewish tobacco workers of the city. The tobacco workers had formed a syndicate that was one of the earliest class-based workers organizations. In August, 1908, it contained some 3,200 members at Gevgeli, Kukush and Salónica—63 percent were Jews while Greeks, Turks and Bulgarians made up the balance. These tobacco workers provided the bulk of support for perhaps the most notable of die socialist organizations in the city, L a Fédération socialiste ouvrière de Salonique, founded in May-June 1909. The founding members were a group of militant Sephardic Jews including A. Benaroya, A. J . Arditti, D. Recanati and J. Hazan as well as a number of Bulgarians and Macedonians, notably A lomov and D. Vlahov. Just months after its founding, a German visited the Club des Ouvriers in Salónica, that had published tlie second issue of its new spaper. Journal del Laborador/Amele Gazetesi, that briefly appeared in four languages At the time, the Club had 100 members, who reportedly were well-versed in German social democracy. The federation became the most important socialist organization of the Ottoman empire from its foundation until the Greek conquest of Salónica in November 1912. By 1910, the federation contained fourteen syndicates. Its strength is suggested by the fact that, in 1912, it could mobilize up to 8 , 0 0 0 workers for its various demonstrations. It was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious organization but drew its strength from among the Jewish workers of the tobacco handling sheds. For some workers, notably the Bulgarians, the federation was a mere tool of the Young Turks and did not represent the working class. This was because the

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Salónica Jews strongly opposed separation from the Ottoman empire and thus the federation that they dominated took an Ottomanist and federalist position. The federation's position was not necessarily cooptation. Rather, it can be seen as an effort to remain above nationalist politics and appeal to the working class identity of its members. Sources: Rich details on the industrial life of Salónica can be found in the reports of the British, French and Imperial German consuls and in the printed provincial yearbooks (Selanik vilayeti

salnamesi)

of the Ottoman government.

MAIN PROBLEMS OF THE ECONOMY DURING THE TANZIMAT PERIOD

INTRODUCTION

For an economic historian, perhaps the first problem to address when discussing the Tanzimat is its periodization. The conventional dates, after all, reflect political events and we conventionally begin the era with the 1839 Giilhane decree. From the economic perspective, 1826 seems an equally valid starting point. The destruction of the Janissaries did not merely eliminate fears of military resistance to political and military reforms. It also was an economic action by the state that crushed the armed defenders of guild privilege. Thereafter, the guilds stood alone when confronting the central Ottoman state. In this way, the 1826 events set the stage for the 1838 Anglo-Turkish convention and its removal of monopolies. They also prepared the way for the 1839 and 1856 steps that the state haltingly took down the road towards laissez-faire economics. If 1826 is a better beginning date for the economic Tanzimat, then the financial crisis of the mid 1870s is a logical end point for the period. This crisis, brought on by the borrowing and, more generally, the fiscal policies of Tanzimat governments, inaugurated a new era in the Ottoman economy. Thereafter, with the formation of the Public Debt Administration, the Ottoman economy lost a considerable amount of its autonomy as a sizeable portion of it fell under the collective control of European finance.1 Part oftiiedifficulty in understanding the economy of the Tanzimat period lies in the scarcity of information regarding the preceding period, one stretching back into the early eighteenth century. The Tanzimat era followed the economic and fiscal crisis of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.2 The Ottoman state was in the midst of a prolonged series of wars involving foreign foes such as Russia as well as rebels in Egypt, if we can use that term for 'Donald C. Blaisdell, European reprint of 1929 edition).

Financial

Control in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1966

Mehmet G e n j , 'XVIII yiizyilda osmanli ekonomisi ve sava$,' Yapit (Nisan-Mayis 1984), 5292).

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

Mohammed Ali Pasha. Major territorial losses in the Balkans were being sustained just as the empire was losing control over Egypt and its revenues. Equally important, the Tanzimat period coincided with the first great wave of British export manufacturing, finally freed by the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Speaking in the broadest possible terms, we can say that the main problem for the Tanzimat economy, as for any economy, was the continued production of resources and the manner of their distribution. Imbedded in this broad issue were other important questions: how the resources would be produced and to the benefit of which individuals and groups? Would the benefits accrue primarily to those within or outside the Ottoman empire and would the resources harnessed serve private or state needs? As throughout Ottoman history, resource production and distribution was shaped by domestic as well as international factors. In internal affairs, during the Tanzimat period, the state embarked on massive centralization programs designed to more thoroughly impose the will of the Istanbul government on the empire. This came to entail more intimate state involvement in everyday affairs as, paradoxically. laissez-faire emerged to challenge dingiste attitudes. This meant that more monies were needed to provide for the expanding state structures; these monies could come from some mixture of increased revenues from the economy and from borrowing. The centralization policies challenged the autonomy ol important economic groups including guilds, notables and tribes, that had gained considerable freedom of action during the preceding century. Political centralization meant tiiat their autonomy needed to be curtailed so that more ol the local surplus could be forwarded to the central administration. International factors, for their part, followed the pattern set since the transformation of Ottoman-global relations after 1750. The productiondistribution question had been given a particular twist by the intrusion of tht European economy into the Ottoman world. The capitalist and industrial revolutions of Western Europe were well underway. Major changes were taking place in European industry, including not only mechanization and factorybuilding but also a radical speed-up of the workpace. There was a significam intensification of work and greater exploitation of labor that drove down costs and placed very cheap goods on the international market. Europear mechanization, for its part, came to require ever-greater inputs of capital. During the early nineteenth century, capital needs in European factories equalled severa days' wages per worker; by the end of the period, the investments required hac soared, to hundreds of days' wages per worker. Thus, Ottoman manufacturing during the Tanzimat era confronted a highly-efficient, mechanizing rival agains1 whom it was increasingly expensive to compete. In European agriculture, £ variety of changes in crop patterns and in technology had increased productivity very substantially. But, rising urbanization and industrialization mean that food

The Economy During the Tanzimat Period

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needs were mounting still more quickly, requiring external sources. How would these changes in European manufacturing, agriculture, and demography affect the Ottoman economy? Europe required and demanded a certain kind of relationship and that meant a particular kind of reordering of the Ottoman economy. Specifically, the West sought to shape the Ottoman Middle East as a supplier of raw materials and consumer of manufactured goods. Hence, for example, the exhortations of William Churchill, M.A. Ubicini and very many others that the Ottoman economy focus its energies on the agrarian sector and that it be committed to free trade. But Ottoman subjects as well as the Ottoman state had their own agendas with sets of needs that sometimes complemented but also conflicted with the requirements of Europe. When these agendas conflicted, which would have priority; would there be a compromise between the two or a surrender of one agenda to the other? *

* *

During die Tanzimat period, private interests as distinct from state concerns became more important than ever before in Ottoman history; correspondingly, the significance of the state in the economy weakened. This is another way of saying that market relations increased in importance, both in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Here, the problem lay in the organization, eilher by Ottoman individuals or their government, of economic resources. Some of the skills and most of the technologies needed to bring about major industrial and agrarian development, as opposed to mere growth, had to be acquired from outside and brought in. This could be achieved through geographical relocation or cultural diffusion. That is, the new agricultural and manufacturing technologies and methods (and fiscal instruments as well) could be employed by foreigners living on Ottoman soil or by Ottoman subjects who learned them and passed them on to others. If introduced by foreigners, technology transfer would be immediate but diffusion of the technology throughout the rest of society would be slower than if introduced by Ottoman subjects. The experience of an Ottoman entrepreneur in the silk cloth industry is illustrative of the problem. In the early nineteenth century, silk cloth weavers were threatened by changing tastes and competition from European manufacturers (and by the draining away of raw silk supplies to the West) as Ottoman consumers came to prefer patterns and styles originating in Europe. During the 1830s and 1840s, tsmet Pa§a from Bursa sought to introduce mechanical looms and European styles into the silk industry of the town. Initially, he explicidy excluded foreign workers, instead relying on skilled Bursa artisans to make silk cloths along European models. In his scheme, the artisans would share in die benefits, according to a 50-50 profit sharing plan. And so, he built a factory near his home and installed a dozen Italian looms. But

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Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire

his experiment failed; iie changed plans and hired an Italian master to produce the sought-after cloth. In this ease, the effort at cultural diffusion of manufacturing technology was given up in favor of geographic relocation. The example has an additional significance. Even with the Italian weaver, Ismet Pa§a's experiment reportedly was not a success and, it seems, the mechanized looms were abandoned. But the Bursa cloth industry retained another innovation for the rest of the century, using British cotton yarn in silk cloth as a means of lowering costs and remaining competitive. 3 Thus, the industry accepted one change while continuing to rely on hand looms. This example stands as a microcosm of the Tanzimat economy experience: one of compromise, incorporating innovation but retaining much of the earlier methods of agricultural and industrial production. In addition to the diffusion of the necessary technologies, there was the matter of the differing needs of the various groups and individuals in the Ottoman economy. The state required increased revenues, and, indeed received impressive increases in tax revenues from the economy. Part of the increase derived from better tax collection methods and part from an economic base that expanded during die Tanzimat era. As is well-known, however, expenditures rose even more rapidly, resulting finally in recourse to international loans and de facto bankruptcy (see below). There were other competing claims for the wealth generated by agriculture and industry. In agriculture, poor peasants struggled with the rich, while both struggled with tribes and with landlords who in turn competed with the suae. In manufacturing, guilds fought with one another and with free labor for control of the workplace. Ottoman merchants and entrepreneurs also had economic requirements Uiat were quite different and in sharp conflict with agrarian and artisanal producers. The merchant and cultivator might demand free trade while the artisans sought protective tariffs. Among these conflicting groups and with its own interests in mind, the state sought to compromise Mixed in with these competing domestic groups were the new demands of international affairs. As the state sought to re-order its international relations, for example, entering the Concert of Europe, it often needed to restructure its relationships with groups within the economy. For example, Sultans Selim III and Mahmud II sought to protect their merchants by creating the Avrupa and Hayriye Tiiccari groups. 4 But then Mahmud II and his successors exposed those merchants to the rigors of free trade through the Convention of 1838 and die reform decrees of 1839 and 1856. For some individuals and groups, the state consequently became too meddling but for others it was insufficiently protective. In agriculture, the

3

B a ? b a k a n I i k Ar 5 ivi (ItHA) Ccv tki 424, 20 c 1251/1835 ; I M V 99, 21 c 1 2 5 6 / 1 8 4 ; (Foreign O f f i c e ) 195/113, Sandison al Bursa, 14 February 1840.

' ' F o r e x a m p l e , see Ali Ihsan Bagi$, Osimnli berath tuccarlar Avrupa rf Hayriye liiccarlari

ticaretinde gayri miislimler. (¡750-1839), (Ankara, 1983).

Kapitiitasyonlar-

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Tanzimat state provided landholders with increasing security of tenure. In part, this derived naturally from the policies of nomadic sedentarization and Hie overall programs of state centralization that finally broke tribal power and, more generally, ended insecurity in most areas of the empire. More specifically, the Land Law of 1858 gave legal usufructary titles to the actual cultivators of the land. Everywhere in the European, Anatolian, and Arab provinces, cultivators flocked to register the lands in their own names.3 Thus, vast numbers of peasants benefitted. But the Istanbul regime, for a series of reasons that paradoxically include both weakness and deliberate intent, left local notables with much power in the countryside, at the expense of the peasants. A famous example is that of the agrarian rebellions in the Bulgarian provinces. They took root when cultivators around Vidin immediately sought to take advantage of the 1839 Giilhane abolition of compulsory services. But, when called on to support these peasant demands, the government waffled and, generally speaking, let services and 'feudal' dues continue. Open revolt erupted in 1850, and the state unsuccessfully tried to compromise between the lords and peasants, discontents that finally led to the Bulgarian breakaway in the 1870s. This and other failed compromises in the agrarian sector were a major factor in the peasant risings that ultimately cost the empire its Balkan possessions.6 In the areas remaining within the Ottoman frontiers, there were other difficulties: the tax farming system continued, despite numerous reform efforts. Thus, local notables retained a certain control over the agrarian surplus. This meant, probably, that the cultivators' tax burden increased as they supported both the expanding central bureaucracy and the local elites. There were similar compromises and ambiguities in the manufacturing sector. On the one hand, a number of major policy enactments directly assaulted the privileged positions of guilds. From an economic perspective, as I argued above, the 1826 destruction of the Janissaries is a crucial turning point. It marked an official turning away from the guilds and the elimination of the major organized armed defender of guild privilege in Ottoman society. The AngloTurkish Convention of 1838 and the reform decrees of 1839 and 1856 then pursued the same path set by the 1826 action. The two decrees specifically abolished monopolies in trading and they implicitly attacked them in manufacturing as well. For example, the state abandoned its former practice of directing the flow of raw materials to diverse guilds such as the mohair weavers in Ankara, the silk weavers of Istanbul, Bursa and Aleppo, and the tanners of Izmir and Istanbul.7 These now were forced to buy their supplies on the open

5

F o r example, see Haim Gerber, The Social Origins of the Modem Middle East (Boulder, CO. 19S7); Toufic Touma, Un Village de Montagne an Liban (Hadeth el-Jobbe) (Paris, 1958). Halil tnalcik, Tanzimat ve Bulgar Meselesi (Ankara, 1943) and his "Application of the

Tanzimat and its Social Effects," Archivum Ottomanicum, 1973, pp. 97-128. See, for example, BBA I MV 7788 1268/1851; Cev Bel 5672 1267/1851.

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market since the export of raw materials was permitted without restriction. Thus, on a broad front, the state undermined guild privilege. But, in dealing with the guilds on an individual basis over the decades of the Tanzimat era, the government often acted quite differently. It sometimes supported and at other times opposed their monopolistic control over a particular manufacturing activity. During the 1840s, the state permitted destruction of a certain guild's monopoly in cloth printing in Istanbul. But, between the 1840s and 1860s, it affirmed the exclusive production privileges of the fez dyers' guild in the capital. Similarly, in 1865, it confirmed the monopoly of the Istanbul tinners' guild. The famed Industrial Reform Commission of the late Tanzimat period, for its part, was another compromise solution to the problem of industrial development. The commission denied guild privilege when it permitted any person to join the newly-formed companies to manufacture goods. But, in the same breath, die commission declared that only the shops of company members could sell the goods produced. 8 There is a pattern to government actions regarding guild artisans in manufacturing sector. The Istanbul regime usually followed a sense of equity rather than relentlessly pursuing laissez faire principles. Thus, the Tanzimat state compromised endlessly on the issue of guilds' position in the Ottoman economy and, hence, guilds continued into the Young Turk period. Let me close this discussion by briefly enumerating some of the specific kinds of problems that the Tanzimat economy faced. I. The shortage of labor for both agriculture and industry remained a major difficulty until 1914. The Ottoman provinces continued to be very sparsely populated, with among the thinnest population densities in European/ Mediterranean worlds. Most of all, perhaps, this harmed prospects for industrial development since there does appear to be a strong correlation between population densities and manufacturing. On the more positive side, land remained quite abundant, some of it rich and fertile. II. The territorial losses suffered by the Ottoman states were extremely grave and of the utmost consequence, a crucial factor in the subsequent evolution of the Tanzimat economy. Almost all the lands lost to the combination of European expansion and Balkan nationalisms were the most densely-populated regions of (he empire, containing the best agricultural lands and the strongest concentrations of industry. Former Ottoman provinces that became the states of Greece and Romania possessed at least twice the population densities of Anatolia

See, for example, DBA I MV 505 1257/1841; BBA I Dah 2874, 1258/1842; BBA I MY 403 1257/1841; MV 21191 1279/1862; 1 S D 45, 19 XII 1284/1868; Osman Nuri, M'ecelle-i Umur-u Belediye (Istanbul. 1330). I pp. 748ff.

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181

and some six times greater than those of the Syrian and Iraqi provinces. Egypt and the Romanian lands had been the most significant grain suppliers of the capital. The former Bulgarian provinces, for their part, proportionately contained about as many iron plows in 1900 as republican Turkey would in 1950! In manufacturing, whole industrial clusters of real importance, such as the wool cloth industry in Bulgaria, were torn out of the Ottoman economy with the independence movements. III. The abandonment of these territories meant the dismemberment and destruction of economic zones within which primary and manufactured goods had once flowed freely. Important quantities of shoe leathers for consumers in Istanbul and Anatolia had come from lost districts/tea such as Tuna and R u s f u k . 9 Most of the buffalo hides for the capital had come from Balkan provinces and only a few from Anatolia. 10 In textiles, an intricate network had linked the soudiern shores of Anatolia with the north and south Black Sea coasts. Kayseri merchants had supplied textile producers on the southern shore of the Black Sea with raw materials, including Adana cotton. They spun the yarn and wove cloth for sale locally and also for export to northern Black Sea areas. This network was destroyed when Russia occupied the north Black Sea coast, including regions such as Abaza, and then imposed tariffs preventing die influx of Ottoman goods. IV. The shortage of skilled labor familiar widi the mechanized industrial technology and with agricultural improvements remained a serious difficulty. This remained the case despite some very impressive improvements in literacy that began in die Tanzimat period and bore fruit towards the end of the nineteenth century. By then, some Ottoman provinces, as diverse as Aleppo and Erzurum (as well as the greater Istanbul area), had proportionately more students of primary school age attending school than did Russia and Italy.11 V. The immigration of Muslim refugees from Russia and from lost Ottoman provinces was a massive economic (and social) strain on the Ottoman system. It overcrowded some cities to the bursting point and provoked numerous clashes between the migrants and already-established population. During the seven years following die end of the Crimean War, for example, four million persons poured into the empire. But, while temporarily disruptive, immigration

9

See, for example, BBA Cev Ikt 1539, R 12130/1815.

I

^Guillaume Antoine Olivier, Travels in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Persia, I (translated, London, 1801), pp. 344-345. II Based on figures in Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, Wi, 1985), pp. 152-153 and 219 and Rondo Cameron, "A New View of European Industrialization," Economic History Review (February 1985), p. 21. My thanks to Joyce Matthews. History Department of State University of New York at Binghamton, who gathered these statistics and made the comparisons.

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in the long run offered some relief to the problems posed by the general paucity of workers and the scarcity of skilled labor. In agriculture, Circassians were famed for their advanced skills and techniques. In manufacturing, Bosnian Muslims came to play an important role later in the century, founding and managing a number of mechanized textile mills in western Anatolia. VI. An unstable currency mocked efforts to build the economy. The issuance of (unbacked) paper money failed to resolved the problem in the 1840s and during the next decade, Ottoman currency continued to fall on the international market. After foundation of the Ottoman Bank in 1856, it stabilized briefly but then collapsed again. While a devalued currency made Ottoman exports cheaper, it raised havoc with long-term public arid private planning. 12 VII. Investment capital remained dispersed and generally unavailable for agricultural and industrial development schemes. And so, entrepreneurs such as Ismet Pa§a of Bursa turned to the government, itself under-financed and uncertainly committed to development. During the Tanzimat period, therefore, comparatively few projects were funded. Later on, consequently, foreign capital stepped in, to build railroads and ports to serve European economic interests. VIII. Although it usually is not recognized as such, the growth of the state was an important economic problem. Both the bureaucracy and the central military grew enormously during the Tanzimat and during the 19th century overall. For example, the military contained 24,000 regular soldiers in 1837 and 120,000 regular troops in 1849: There were one-half million civil service jobs in 1900 that had not existed in 1800.33 This expansion had various economic and social effects. It cost a great deal, draining away vast sums potentially available for agricultural and industrial development. This is well-known and frequently has been remarked on. Hie employ of these many thousands of persons served as a disincentive to economic growth in other, less familiar, ways. It removed some of the urgency for changes in agriculture and manufacturing since government service offered regular, salaried, alternative occupations. In addition, governmental employ pulled sorely-needed labor from these sectors. Military and bureaucratic growth also affected the pattern of ethnic participation in the economy. Civil service and military positions legally were available to all Ottomans. In the military, non-Muslims as a group demanded and received exemption from conscription until the early 20th century. In the civilian bureaucracy, only Muslims, in fact, regularly were allowed to rise to the top of

12

E. Engelhardt, La Turquie eI le Tanzimat (Paris, 1882) I, pp. 72-73 and 165-168.

'^Engelhardt, I, p. 89 and II, pp. 281-282.

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the hierarchy. 14 This meant that the best and brightest of the non-Muslims, voluntarily and otherwise, focused on non-government careers. Thus, expansion of the state and the military reinforced the ongoing non-Muslim takeover of the economy, particularly of its finance, industry and international commerce. The best and brightest of the Muslims, for their part, found promotions and careers in the service of the state. In this way, the expanding governmental sector strengthened trends already at work in the Tanzimat economy.

Carter Vaughn Findley, "The Acid Test of Ottomanism: The Acceptance of Non-Muslims in the Late Ottoman Bureaucracy," in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (New York, 1982) I, pp. P 339-368.

LABOR AND WORKING CLASS HISTORY DURING THE LATE OTTOMAN PERIOD c. 1800-1914

INTRODUCTION

The study of labor and working class history is scarcely a new subject in Middle Eastern and Ottoman history and can be traced to articles by Bernard Lewis and Omer Lutfi Barkan on the guilds. A few years later, Gibb and Bowen's study appeared. Although primarily concerned with Ottoman state institutions, this two-volume work devoted a full chapter to artisans and guilds. Another early work is the unique inquiry of H.A. §anda, often overlooked because of limited circulation. This is an invaluable study into the nature and evolution of the late Ottoman and early republican Turkish working class. Since the mid-1970s, when Ottoman history came into its own as a separate field, the main thrust of Ottoman studies in general has been in the direction of social and economic history. This trend is so marked that the major gathering of Ottoman historians continues to be triennial conferences, the first held at Ankara in 1977, bearing the title "The Social and Economic History...." Within this larger pattern is the sub-field of labor and working class history. Concerned with workers and the working class, this area of scholarship began to emerge in the mid-1960s, as seen in the studies of Haupt, Velikov, Tuncay, and Sencer, that concerned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Gabriel Baer's many studies of Ottoman guilds began to appear at about the same time and have profoundly shaped the way that we think on this subject. His work often focuses less on the workers than on their relationship to the Ottoman state. Many of the works that concern labor and working class history itself were written in the first maturation of the field, during the 1960s, while most subsequent works have a broader focus. The encyclopedic account by Sencer offers an overview of strikes and protests of the post-1870 period. Mete Tuncay's account is valuable, especially for its presentation of worker militancy. Paul Dumont published a series of important articles that focuses on workers and

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workers' organizations. The 1964 Velikov article similarly is important. Later studies specifically on workers or workers' organizations include Inalcik's brief but helpful article and Ozkara's narrative account that provides a useful summary of the 1908 strike wave.

Studies that include workers in their more broadly-based presentations include those by Suraiya Faroqhi, who has written in detail on crafts and artisans. Amnon Cohen's flawed study of seventeenth-century Jerusalem contains valuable nuggets about the local guilds. Haim Gerber, more successfully, has provided an account of workers in the Bursa area. Most of the scholarship discussing workers has other subjects as its main theme, for example, the provisioning needs of the state, or a particular industry, or the Ottoman economy in general. Authors have tended to place more emphasis on industries and output levels than on artisans and their lifestyles. Workers infrequently are at center stage.

SOME

PROBLEMS

FOR

RESEARCH

The purpose of this article is to call attention to and encourage research in the subject of late Ottoman labor and working class history. The subject of inquiry here are the Ottoman workers and workers' organizations themselves, not the state or a particular industry or economic activity. Workers include guild members and also non-guild labor and, in the final Ottoman decades, those who began to organize themselves into unions and syndicates. We need to exercise care not to focus only on workers who formally organized although this is easy to do, given the nature of the sources usually employed. Substantial numbers of Ottoman artisans and laborers did not belong to formal labor organizations of any type. This statement is true for the beginning as well as the end of the nineteenth century, in urban as well as rural areas. Guild members were the most visible but not the only Ottoman workers. Labor and working class history is bursting with exciting and unresolved issues. Take, for example, the subject of the janissaries and their economic functions. In recent years, Edmund Burke III and Cemal Kafadar, as well as the present writer, have been exploring this extraordinarily-rich subject. From the perspective of labor history, what was the significance of the janissaries' abolition? The economic tasks they pursued and their role as guardians of elements of the working class are fascinating subjects awaiting still more research. The entire question of guilds remains wide open. We do not know how guilds really functioned and there is precious little on their internal organization and dynamics. In 1990, Onur Yildmm began a study of guild rituals that holds much promise. Researchers also need to trace changes in guild functions,

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organizations and dynamics as craft guilds declined. How important were craft guilds anway? Can we speak of an Ottoman guild as a monolithic entity, with the same characteristics everywhere? Probably not. It likely will be more profitable to discuss guilds in the particular towns and cities—Istanbul, Bursa, Salonica, Diyarbakir, Mosul, Aleppo, Damascus, and so forth—and then compare and contrast their functions and characteristics. Workers outside of the guilds are equally important but the lack of a formal organizational structure makes their study difficult. Ottoman archival materials on these workers are scarce since they did not form taxable units. It, however, might be worthwhile to examine records concerning payments of certain taxes, such as the temetttt vergisi, for information regarding at least some non-guild urban workers. Except when they agitated, demonstrated, rioted or otherwise brought themselves to the attention of the slate, these workers hardly are present in the materials that I have consulted at the Ottoman Archives (Osmanli Ar§ivi, formerly the Prime Ministry Archives [Ba§bakanlik Ar§ivi]). The interactions and relationships between guild and non-guild workers need to be examined. Non-guild girls and women, for example, frequently supplied spun yarn and other materials to male guild members. The entire question of female and child labor awaits systematic exploration. Women routinely were in the work force of many industries, both urban and rural, within and outside the home. The impact of such waged work on intra-household relations, however, remains uncertain. Moreover, we need to consider the implications of the observation that female participation was greatest in exportoriented industries, notably carpet making and raw silk reeling. Did the relative importance of female labor in manufacturing increase with the rise of European capital penetration? It is tempting to put this forward as a hypothesis, but female labor was common in earlier centuries as well. Child labor, similarly, must be dealt with, since many children worked in Ottoman factories, both state and privately-owned, and manufactured in the home and the workshop as well. The issue of ethnicity begs for a sober examination that rises above hoary notions concerning the ethnic division of labor. The purported ethnic division of Ottoman labor seems to owe more to blooming nineteenth-century nationalisms that were assaulting, the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Ottoman empire than to the actuality of the labor force. My own research on textile manufacturing, for example, reveals no particular set of ethnic characteristics in the work force. In some regions, Armenians formed the dominant group while Greeks or Turks or Arabs were the majority elsewhere. Company histories, of both local firms and those of foreign origin, offer another rich vein of materials for labor and working class historians. Longstanding Ottoman family-based firms at U§ak, for example, organized the

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important carpet industry. Kayseri firms controlled a network linking cultivators in the raw cotton regions of southeast Anatolia to spinners and weavers on both shores of the Black Sea. Of more recent vintage are the scores of factories that Ottoman entrepreneurs built at locations such as Salonica, Adana, Izmir, Istanbul and Bursa. Did company files survive the cataclysm of the early twentieth century and are they accessible? In some locations, the industrial buildings and the neighborhoods around them remain. Oral history could play an important role. Surely some records have survived, living memories have endured; the firms themselves sometimes still exist. Similarly, foreign corporations such as the various railway companies or public utilities kept records, but their location has remained a mystery. Are the records in the Ottoman lands or were they repatriated to their countries of origin with the disappearance of the empire? Those of the Ottoman Bank presently are being organized, but the others must be located and organized. We also need to consider the impact of foreign corporations on the composition and character of the work force. All of die foreign companies that I have examined so far tended to hire foreign nationals for the top jobs, Armenians and Greeks for the middle rank, and Muslims for the lowest positions. This process needs to be traced in more detail. An ethnic division of labor was present, but introduced from the outside, at a very late date. Labor syndicates and unions equally deserve additional attention, perhaps beginning with an examination of their leaders, members and agendas. Their policies towards female and child labor also demand research. The links of these Ottoman-based groups to European organizations, early described by Benaroya, similarly need further study. The sources are many and varied and include those of the unions and their leaders as well as company records.

SOURCES Heretical as it may sound to those of us reared in Ottoman history over the past several decades, the Ottoman Archives may not be the best source for late Ottoman labor and working class history. Put in the most favorable manner, it must be said that these archives cannot be used as the sole source by the labor historian. The problem is twofold. First of all, the archives reflect state concerns. If the workers were of fiscal or security concern, or were providing services or goods, they were recorded. Otherwise, they, apparently, remained invisible. And how can we ascertain the importance of those absent? Second, there seems to be a striking discontinuity in archival record keeping over the course of the nineteenth century. During the first half of the century, more or less, there are abundant archival citations recording the activities of the craft guilds. As these guilds declined, so did state record keeping, and after the 1860s, there seem to be

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comparatively few records relating to labor issues. But Ottoman manufacturing itself did not disappear and continued to employ vast numbers of workers. Those working full-time in industry numbered in the hundreds of thousands; in addition, many more worked part-time, mixing manufacturing with farming and/or household tasks. A non-guild labor force worked and earned wages. But they rarely are in the written records of the Ottoman Archives. Either these workers went untaxed and unrecorded or the relevant records have not been catalogued. Hence, there are state documents about concessions to build factories but none on the workers in the factories that were built. Similarly invisible are the workers in sectors of the Ottoman economy that emerged during the nineteenth century, notably the railroad workers. As these new sources of employ developed, their workers do not appear to have entered into formal relationships with the state and its record keepers as had the dying craft guilds. The large group working on the railroad appears in the archival documents on the occasion of its 1908 strike and then disappears. While the Ottoman Archives are useful, we must recognize the limitations of the records that we utilize. Among the Ottoman Archive materials, the Cevdet classification has much for the c. pre-1850 period. The most useful categories probably are tktisat, Nafla, Belediye, and Dahiliye. For the later period, the fradeler have proven to be of comparatively limited value but should be consulted. The frustratinglycatalogued Yildiz collection is of still less importance for this topic. The Bab-i Ali Evrak Odasi (BEO) materials are much richer, particularly the Dahiliye and Zaptiye documents. The Bahriye catalogues also are important and not only for port workers; the great Zonguldak coal fields and Iheir workers were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Marine. The disadvantage of the BEO classification is its restricted chronological coverage, from the 1890s, and its (apparent) concern only for discontented workers. That is, workers appear here principally when they are disorderly. Ongoing cataloguing at the archives, however, could prove this impression to be incorrect. About ten years ago, for example, a catalogue of materials from the Nafla Nezareti, for the period 1280-93 A.H. (1863-77) appeared. The catalogue contains exceptionally rich data for the labor historian, scores of documents on railroad construction workers,, their wages, working conditions, labor disputes, and so forth. Similarly, some of the dosya series became available and provided excellent materials on issues concerning workers. There are many Ottoman archival sources valuable for labor and working class history that I have not consulted personally. Rhoads Murphey used the archives of the Istanbul mtlftaltik. to great advantage. There are the vast and exceptionally rich Sharia court records (§eriye sicilleri); those from regions now inside the Turkish republic have been assembled in the Turkish National Library (Milli KUtiiphane) in Ankara. In common with other state documents, caution should be employed since they reflect only officially-recorded issues and are

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necessarily-incomplete records of workers' lives. Furthermore, they are biased in favor of those workers wealthy and/or sophisticated enough to use them. Many times, in the front of the particular volume can be found the listing of the estate of a deceased person, sometimes bound separately (tereke deflerleri). Once again, only some workers had recourse to this legal device; but the listings clearly constitute an important source for the labor historian. In addition, the records of the pious foundations, many on deposit in the Ankara-based Vakiflar Genel Müdürlügü Arçivi, can be used to great advantage since the pious foundations retained important urban real-estate holdings, including manufacturing sites. These records contain lists of tools and implements, as well as the spatial characteristics of the workshop and the rents paid for the shop. Furthermore, separate registers (vazife deflerleri) can be gleaned for data on wages paid; these have great potential for labor history since they extend for long periods, often centuries. European and American diplomatic correspondence forms an indispensable source for the inquirer into late Ottoman labor and working class history. Its greatest value is for the study of non-organized labor, that rose in importance during the nineteenth century. This is precisely the group most often ignored in Ottoman government sources. These foreign governments were deeply concerned about workers because of the social unrest in their homelands; thus, they paid attention to Ottoman workers and sometimes there are reports solely on workers. The American sources are surprisingly good, located in the National Archives in Washington and available on inexpensive microfilm. The famed Public Record Office just outside London forms an essential source. Its value diminishes after c. 1875 as the British government increasingly, it appears, ignored economic matters in favor of political issues. The French consular materials at the Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères are very rich and improve in quality as the century matures. In Germany, the reports are located in the Foreign Ministry Archives (Auswärtiges Amt) in Bonn and in Potsdam, just outside Berlin. The latter is easily the more profitable for the labor historian. The German materials becomc fantastically rich late in the nineteenth century and, without question, form the test single foreign source for late Ottoman labor and working class history. I have not consulted the Haus-Hof und Staats-archiv in Vienna specifically on labor issues, beyond the Ottoman port workers' role in the 1908 boycott of Austro-Hungarian goods and shipping. Less well-known are printed consular reports that the American, British, French, German, Italian and Austro-Hungarian governments began publishing late in the nineteenth century. All of these are readily available in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (see bibliography for exact titles). In the American case, there are published monthly and even daily consular reports. Customarily, the various governments destroyed the original consular reports

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after publication. These published reports are often rich and can run to hundreds of closely-printed pages on matters of central importance to the labor and working class historian. An archive of republican Turkish labor sources recently has been formed at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. This Institute has a distinguished record in the general field of labor and woiking class history and the formation of an archive on Turkish labor is an important development for Middle Eastern studies. The Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford, California has a collection of worker-related materials without peer in the United States. The library of the University of California, Los Angeles, also has many unique and important published works, mainly in Ottoman Turkish but also some in western languages regarding late Ottoman labor history. Foreign newspapers tend to have little on the subject until 1908, a reflection of Ottoman press censorship. The London Times and others can be of use for the post 1908 period, especially the labor strikes. The same is true for Ottoman newspapers in general. But several are from a left-wing or pro-worker perspective and must be consulted for the post-1908 period: these include fyirak and Aydmhk. In sum, the shortage lies not in the harvest that is available but in the labor force.

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A HIGHLY

SELECTIVE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Published consular reports Austria: Berichte der k. u. k. Öster.-Ung. Konsularümter über das Jahr.... Herausgegeben im auftrage des K.K. Handelsministeriums vom K.K. Österr. Handelsmuseum. Vienna, 1900-12. France: Bulletin consulaire français. Recueil des rapports commerciaux adressés au Ministère des affaires étrangères par les agents diplomatiques et consulaires de France à l'étranger. Paris, 1877-1914. Germany. Deutsches Reich. Handel und Industrie. Berichte über Handel und Industrie. Berlin, 1900-15. Great Britain: Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers. London, 1876-1913. United States: Department of State. Commercial Relations of the United States. Washington, 1856-. , Daily Consular Reports. Washington, I901-. Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Manufactures, Monthly Consular and Trade Reports. Washington, 1907-. Other sources: Akarli, Engin, "Implements, Mastership, Shop Usufruct and Monopoly Among Istanbul Artisans, 1750-1850," Wissenschaftskolleg Jahrbuch, pp. 22531. Anatolian Railway Company, Statuts de la caisse de retraites des agents du chemin de fer ottoman d'Anatolie (Constantinople, 1907). Anadolu osmanh demiryolu, fddihar sandigi nizamnamesi (Istanbul, 1895). , Ihtiyat ve iane sandiklan nizamnamesi (Istanbul, 1895). Atatürk Ansiklopedisi. vol. 2, pp. 80-85 and 190-92 (articles on 1908 strikes). Ayni, Mehmet Ali, "Tiirkiye'de ilk amele grevi," Canli Tarihler 2 (Istanbul, 1945): 59-64. Baer, Gabriel, "The Administrative, Economic, and Social Functions of Turkish Guilds," International Journal of Middle East Studies 1 (1970): 28-50. , "Guilds in Middle Eastern History," in M. A. Cook (ed.), Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East (London, 1970), pp. 11-30. , "Ottoman Guilds: A Reassessment," in O. Okyar and H. Inalcik (eds), The Economic and Social History of Turkey 1071-1920 (Ankara, 1979), pp. 75-93. Barkan, Omer Lûtfi, "Osmanli imparatorlugunda esnaf cemiyetleri," îktisat Fakültesi Mecmuasi 41.1-4 (1985): 39-46. Baykara, Tuncer, Osmanli ta§ra teçkilâtwda XVIII. yüzyilda görev ve görevliler (Anadolu) (Ankara, 1990). Beldiceanu-Steinherr. Irène, "Les Laboureurs Associés en Anatolie (XVe-XVIe siècles)," in I-L. Bacqué-Grammont and Paul Dumont, (eds.),

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Contributions à l'histoire économique et sociale de l'empire ottoman (Paris, 1983), pp. 93-104. Benaroya, Abraam, "Die Türkische Gewerkschaftsbewegung," Sozialistische Monatschefte 14.16 (11 August 1910): 1079-81. Chevalier, Dominique, La société du Mont Liban à l'époque de la révolution industrielle en Europe (Paris, 1971). Cohen, Amnon, Economic Life in Ottoman Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1989). Copoiu, N., Le socialisme européen et le mouvement ouvrier et socialiste en Roumanie, 1835-1921 (Bucarest, 1973). Corcoran, Kelly S., "The Iconography of Labor in the Middle East," Graduate Seminar Paper, SUNY Binghamton, 1990. Demirel, Ömer, "II. Mahmud döneminde Sivas'ta esnaf teçkilâû ve iiretimtüketim ili|kileri," Hacettepe Üniversitesi Yiiksek Lisans tezi, 1987. Dumont, Paul "A propos de la 'classe ouvrière' ottomane à la veille de la révolution jeune turque," Turcica 9 (1977): 229-51. , "Une organisation socialiste ottomane: La Fédération ouvrière de Salonique (1908-1912)," Études Balkaniques 1 (1975): 76-88. , "Sources inédites pour l'histoire du mouvement ouvrier et des courants socialistes dans l'empire ottoman au début du XXe siècle," Études Balkaniques 3 (1978): 16-34. "La fédération socialiste ouvrière de Salonique à l'époque des guerres balkaniques," East European Quartely 14.4 (Winter, 1980): 383-410. Eriççi/Eroglu, Lûtfi, TUrkiye i$çi smifi tarihi (Istanbul, 1951). Faroqhi, Suraiya, Towns and Townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia: Trade, Crafts and Food Production in an Urban Setting, 1520-1650 (Cambridge, 1984), esp. pp. 123-88. , "Textile Production in Rumeli and the Arab Provinces: Geographical Distribution and Internal Trade, 1560-1650," Ottoman Studies 1 (1980): 61-83. , "Onyedinci yiizyil Ankarasinda sof imalâti ve sof atelyeleri," fktisat FakUltesi Mecmuasi 41 (1985): 237-56. Gabriel, A., Les dessous de l'administration des chemins de fer ottomans d'Anatolie et de Bagdad (Istanbul, 1911) (by deposed head of railroad union). Gaulmier, Jean, "Notes sur le mouvement syndicaliste à Hama," Revue des études islamiques 1 (1932). Genç, Mehmet, "XVII-XIX. ytizyillarda sanayi ve ticaret merkezi olarak Tokat," in Türk tarihinde ve kültüründe Tokat Sempozyiunu 2-6 Temrnuz 1986 (Ankara, 1987), pp. 145-70. Georgiades, Démétrius, Smyme et l'Asie Mineure (Paris, 1885), pp. 145-77 (for Izmir port workers). Gerber, Haim, Economy and Society in an Ottoman City. Bursa, 1600-1700 (Jerusalem, 1988).

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Gibb, H.A.R. and H. Bowen, Islamic Society and. the West, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Oxford, 1950 and subsequent editions), pp. 276-99. Goldberg, Ellis, "Artisans and Craftsmen in 19th Century Egypt, Premature Announcements of Their Deaths," in Ç. Keyder and D. Quataert (eds.), Nineteenth Century Ottoman Anatolia and Egypt: A Comparison (forthcoming). , "Muslim Union Politics in Egypt: Two Cases," in Edmund Burke III and Ira M. Lapidus (eds), Islam, Politics and Social Movements (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 228-43. , Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt, 1930-1952 (Berkeley, 1986). Güzel, §ehmus, "Le mouvement ouvrier et les grèves en Turquie: de l'empire ottoman à nos jours," Ph.D. diss., Aix-en-Provence, 1975. , "Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyet'e t§çi Hareketleri ve Grevler," in Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyet'e Tiirkiye Ansiklopedisi, vol. 3 (Istanbul, 1985), pp. 803-28. Hartmann, Martin, Der Islamische Orient: Berichte und Forschungen, Bd. III, Unpolitische Briefe aus der Türkei (Leipzig, 1910), pp. 18-23, 195-99, and 248. Haupt, Georges, "Le début du mouvement socialiste en Turquie," Le mouvement socialé 45 (Octobre-Décembre 1963): 121-37. Hoover Institution. See under Stanford University. Hristov, Hristo Ivanov, "Rapports de la première internationale avec les mouvements ouvriers et de liberation nationale dans les Balkans," Études Historiques 7 (1975): 265-79. Inalcik, Halil, "The Appointment Procedure of a Guild Warden (Kethuda)" Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 76 (1986): 135-42. International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. See Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 15 (March 1991): 210-12. Karakiçla, Yavuz Selim, "The Great Strike Wave of 1908," Graduate Seminar Paper, SUNY Binghamton, 1990. Labaki, Boutros, Introduction à l'histoire économique du Liban (Beyrouth, 1984). Lockman, Zachary and Joel Beinin, Workers on the Nile (Princeton, 1988). Longuenesse, Elisabeth, "La classe ouvrière en Syrie: une classe en formation," Ph.D. diss., Paris, École des hautes études, 1977. McChesney, R.D., "Ilyas Qudsi on the Craft Organization of Damascus in the Late Nineteenth Century," Farhad Kazemi and R.D. McChesney (eds), A Way Prepared: Essays on Islamic Culture in Honor of Richard Bayly Winder (New York, 1988), pp. 80-106. Özdemir, Rifat, "Ankara esnaf te§kilâti (1785-1840)," Egitirn FakUltesi Dergisi 1 (n.d., Samsun): 5-116. Özkara, Sami, Türkische Arbeiterbewegung 1908 im Osmanischen Reich im Spiegel des Botschaftsberichte, der volkwirtschaftlichen und politischen Entwicklungen (Frankfurt/Main, 1985).

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Panayotopoulos, Alkiviades, "The Hellenic Contribution to the Ottoman Labour and Socialist Movement after 1908," Études Balkaniques 1 (1980): 38-57. Pinon, Rene, L'Europe et la Jeune Turquie (Paris, 1913), pp. 272-94. Quataert, Donald, "Class Consciousness among Ottoman Workers, 1800-1914," paper presented to Conference on Middle Eastern Labor and Working Class History, Harvard University, 1990. , Home, Workshop and Factory in the Ottoman Middle East, 18001914 (Cambridge, forthcoming). , Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881-1908 (^tw York, 1983). , "The Employment Policies of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, 1881-1909," Wiener Zeitschrift far die Kunde des Morgenlandes 76 (1986): 233-37. Rafeq, Abdul Karim, "The Impact of Europe on a Traditional Economy: The Case of Damascus, 1840-1870," in J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont and Paul Dumont (eds.), Économie et sociétés dans l'empire ottoman (Paris, 1983). Raymond, André, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVUIe siècle, 2 vols. (Damascus, 1973-74). §anda, H. A., Tiirkiye'de 54 yil ônceki i}çi hareketleri (Istanbul, 1962). Reprint of 1935 edition originally published as 1908'de ecnebi sermayesine kar$i ilk kalki§malar). Sencer, Oya, Tiirkiye'de i§çi sinifi (Istanbul, 1969). Shields, Sarah, "An Economic History of 19th Century Mosul," Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1987, esp. pp. 21-172. Stanford University, The Library Catalogs of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Catalog of the Turkish and Persian Collection (Boston, 1969). Tevfik, Ebuziyya, Yeni osmanhlar tarihi, 3 (Istanbul, 1974): 495-509 (concerning 1873 tersane strike). Todorov, Nikolai, The Balkan City, 1400-1900 (Seattle, 1983). TUrk Kultiiru ve ahilik, XXI. Aliilik Bayrami sempozyumu tebligleri (Istanbul, 1986). Tuncay, Mete, Tiirkiye'de sol akimlar 1908-1925 (Istanbul, 1967 and later editions). Vatter, Sheiry, "The European Capitalist Impact upon the Textile Industry of Ottoman Damascus, 1820-1880: A Reassessment," c. 1987 (private circulation). Velikov, Stefan, "Sur le mouvement ouvrier et socialiste en Turquie après la révolution jeune-turque de 1908," Études Balkaniques 1 (1964): 29-48. , "Georges Dimitrov et quelques questions du mouvement ouvrier en Turquie," Études Balkaniques 1 (1972): 115-22. Yildinm, Onur, "Ritual, Discipline and Labor in the Craft Organizations of Istanbul During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," Graduate Seminar Paper, SUNY Binghamton, 1990.

JANISSARIES, ARTISANS AND THE QUESTION OF OTTOMAN DECLINE 1730-1826

The Janissaries are familiar actors in Ottoman history and their role is well-known to students and scholars alike. The commonly-held view of the Janissaries can be summarized as follows. In the early Ottoman centuries, Janissary prowess, skills and fighting courage brought victories to the sultans and fear to their European and Safevid foes. But afterwards, it was the sultans more than foreign enemies who feared the Janissaries. In these latter times, the Janissaries lost their valor, their discipline and fighting capabilities and ran amok, deposing sultans and terrorizing upstanding subjects of the empire. This intolerable state of affairs finally was rectified in 1826, after much planning, by the resolute reforming sultan Mahmud II who destroyed this debauched and vulgar mob, ushering in the sorely-needed era of reforms. In sum, the Janissaries have been represented as an institution of the Ottoman classical age that had become debased, corrupted and perverted. They are vulgar, crude, bloodthirsty "canaille", an unreasoned, avaricious mob who routinely abused and raped women. No crime was too great, not even religious hypocrisy. Janissaries were anti-Muslim and included many Christians who had clandestinely joined to collect unearned salaries. But this wasn't enough for their critics and so the Janissaries also were reactionaries opposed to the reforms of the sultan. In this case, die reforms were Western reforms, notably the introduction of arms and military strategies. So, in this sense, Christian Janissaries also were anti-Christian!1 The Janissaries have served well as a key symbol of Ottoman decline, of what had gone wrong with the empire. When they were destroyed, in 1826, it

'Mehmet Esad, Oss-U Zafer (Istanbul, 1232).

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was said that their housing quarters had been "cleansed" and that "scorpions" had been eliminated.2 * *

*

This paper offers the results of my preliminary investigations into the social basis of the Janissaries as well as their economic and political role during the period c. 1730-1826. My premise is a straightforward one. The Janissaries were based in specific social groups and represented particular economic and political interests during the 18th and 19th centuries. Because they lost their political battles, their identity, their interests and their economic-political functions have been overlooked. Our view of the Janissaries has rested on an uncritical acceptance of Ottoman chroniclers and historians. The most important single source most likely is the book by Esad Effendi, the "Basis of Victory" (Üss-ii Zafer), that provides an extremely-detailed and influential account of the Corps and its destruction. His version of the Janissaries, for all intents and purposes, has been echoed in virtually all later scholars, both Ottoman, modem Turkish and foreign. He was appointed imperial historian (vakaniivis) in September 1825, replacing §anizade who was suspected of pro-Janissary (or rather pro-Bektashi) learings. Thus, this chronicler of Janissary destruction owed his appointment to his political position on the issue He played an important role in the destruction and "was rewarded with a scries of promotions, honors and sinecures" by a grateful Mahmud. 3 Esad Effendi was no mere observer of historical events, he was a participant in the events that he records, a partisan who substantially benefitted from their outcome His book was part of the sultan's sustained effort to delegitimize the Janissaries. Mehmet Esad Effendi offers us an image of die latter-day Janissaries that resembles Burke's or perhaps Taine's descriptions of the crowd during the French Revolution. But, Esad's "Basis of Victory" is not really an account of the Janissaries, but rather, it is an official government version of what the sultan and his group planned and did. He offers us the state's interpretation of who the Janissaries were and what they wanted. His is a view from high above and from a great distance. About the Janissaries themselves, Esad Effendi tells us very little. For Esad Effendi, the Janissaries were opponents of the sultan and his reforms and that was sufficient description Alternately obscurantist Muslims or deceitful Christians, the Janissaries mindlessly pillaged, raped and terrorized. Similarly, the great

^Ismail Hakki Uzuncar$ili. Osmanli devleli tefkilatindan pp. 524-5.

kapikulu ocaklan,

I, (Ankara, 1943),

^Howard Reed, "The Destruction of the Janissaries by Mahmud II in June, 1826," Unpublished Ph.d. dissertation, Princi-ton University, 1951, p. 97.

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Turkish historian Uzunjarjili, in his monumental work Kapikulu Ocaklari4, tells us much about the military organization of the Janissaries, whom he considered to be shameless (edepsiz). But he offers virtually nothing about the Janissaries as members of a social group or about their economic and political interests.3 The rest of the paper seeks to sketch out some ideas and hypotheses concerning the social composition of the Janissaries and their motives for action during the 18th and 19th centuries. As is well-known, these latter-day Janissaries were intimately connected with various trades and professions. These relationships go back very far; one observer in the later 17th century noted that Janissaries' pay was so low that they "attend other Trades and services" in order to maintain themselves and their families.6 But, the Janissary-guild links seem to have been few in the 17th century and were developed much later.7 Some historians have argued that the Janissaries controlled virtually all the professions and trades in cities as far apart as Aleppo and Edime. 8 Esad Effendi states that "willingly or not", every guild ( e s n a f ) was under Janissary protection.9 Most urban artisans were said to be Janissary-affiliated in the 18 th century while most Janissaries were said to be artisans.10 The Janissaries were said to control the guilds of Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad and lesser cities where they were the majority of guild members. 11 "Almost to a man they were artisans and as such members of trade corporations."12 It is premature to fully accept these assertions at their word although they may turn out to be true. Various enumerations of Janissaries leave a very incomplete picture. Istanbul-based Janissaries during the early 19th century worked as house painters, carpenters, stone cutters (tagci), tobacconists, Khurasan brass founders, as well as laborers (alternately rengper or irgat), fruit peddlers, porters and boatmen. 13 In Aleppo, during the later 18th century, many

4

Uzuncarçih, 2 vols.. (1943).

^Uzuncarçili, I, p. 515 after Esad, p. 14. ®Paul Rycaut, The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1668), p. 198. Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans la seconde moitié du XVIle siècle, (Paris, 1962), p. 393. 8

Ghazzi as cited in Herbert Bodman, Political Factions in Aleppo, 1760-1826, (Chapel Hill, 1963), pp. 64-5 and Reed, p. 258, who reports that in 1826, the town guilds in Edirne "were all closely associated" with the Janissaires. 9 Esad p. 133. 10 H.A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West, I, (Oxford, 1963 reprint), pp. 184 and 285, where they mis-quote general statements in Osman Nun Ergin, Mecelle-i Umur-u Belediye, I, (Istanbul, 1922) p. 619 as well as Mustafa Nuri, Netayic ul vukuat, 2nd ed. (Istanbul, 1327), II, p. 95, III, 85-86. 11 Gibb and Bowen, I, p. 295. 11 Gibb and Bowen, I, p. 184; see I, pp. 63 and 322 ff for origins of the Janissary-guild connections. 13

Esad, p. 140; Reed, pp. 279. 281-282.

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Janissaries were connected to the caravan business as hostlers, smiths, saddlers, porters, food suppliers, and included slaughterhouse workers. Janissary control was the greatest in the butchers guild. 14 Generally, Janissaries gave "a lower class atmosphere", and included streetcleaners as well as workers (spinners?) in the thread market for tent makers. Aleppo and Istanbul Janissaries dominated the grain supply in the two cities and migrants from the countryside played an important role, particularly in the transport trade. Neither of these comparatively-detailed enumerations suggests a broad occupational base encompassing all or even most artisanal categories. No textile manufacturers are included, with the exception of the workers in the tentmakers' market. This is noteworthy since, after food processing, it was the largest single urban industry. The origins of the Janissaries' connections with guilds, at least in Istanbul and Aleppo, lay in occupations connected with the shipment of goods, particularly foodstuffs. From this base. Janissaries expanded their economic activities to include the professions mentioned above. If it is true that they came to control virtually all trades and professions, as many historians have asserted, then this must have occurred late in the period, probably not before 1800. My surmise is that the Janissaries began to enhance their economic and political influence only after 1740; it then accelerated very rapidly near the end of the 18th century and in the early 19th century.15 A clue to the occupational composition of the Janissaries perhaps lies in the accounts of their final uprising and destruction. When the Janissaries called for support, the "Water sellers, porters and vagrants, as always, gathered to form the second ring around die soup kettles." 16 Following the state's successful military action against the corps, the sultan's forces focused on the porters and boatmen of Istanbul, particular objects of suspicion and punishment. Several diousands of them have been forced to quit their usual haunts, to leave their little property behind, and to set out instantly for their native places in distant parts of Asia, with means of subsistence but barely sufficient for the journey. 17 Some of the married men were exempted from the deportation, but "all" bachelors were exiled. The bachelor quarters of these workers indeed were the

' ^Rodman, pp. 63-4. The military function of some Janissary battalions (orta) surely facilitated their entry into these occupations. 15 Ghazzi pp. 64-65, for Aleppo as quoted by Bodman who compares the testimony with that of A. Russell. The Natural History of Aleppo, 2nd ed. (London, 1794), whose careful account of the trades of the city neglects to mention any Janissary connection. 16 Enver Ziya Karal. Osmanh Tarihi, V, (Ankara, 1961), pp. 146-147. 17 G r e a t Britain, Foreign Office (FO) 78/143, Constantinople, June 22, 1826, Stratford Canning.

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scorpion nests so feared by the state. In 1814, the sultan had demolished many of these dwellings, often located on the upper floors of boatsbeds, "driving the inhabitants, to the number of more than three thousand, back into the provinces from which they had come." 18 The effort had failed and the bachelor housing of the porters and boatmen—in the Tahtakale, Asmaalti, Balikpazan and Unkapam quarters—were the centers of Janissary unrest and were targeted for attack by the forces of the state. In the bloody repression that followed the 1826 abolition of the Janissaries, as many as 20,000 porters and boatmen were driven from the city. Many were Kurds but most were Turks. 19 As Mahmud removed these porters and boatmen, he ordered the Armenian patriarch to recruit 10,000 workers to replace them. 20 Some, perhaps most, of these porters and boatmen were, as seen, propertyless. But at least some Janissaries active in the events of 1826 possessed shops and stores and were exiled "without being allowed to close up their businesses." 21 Some ran coffeehouses while others were shopkeepers selling tobacco, fruits and vegetables. In sum, the Janissaries (at least in Istanbul and Aleppo) seem to have represented the predominantly Turkish Muslim lowerworking class strata, with a large proportion of them working as porters, boatmen, day laborers and fruit-peddlers. They monopolized access to worksites, organized the labor force and represented the workers in negotiations with the owners or merchants. 22 For example, when construction of a building began, a Janissary labor foreman (irgat ba$i) arrived and drew the insignia of the battalion (orta) at the site, indicating it to be under that particular group's authority. The foreman negotiated the wage rates with the property owner, collected the payroll each week and distributed it to the workers. Such behavior made the Janissaries appear as extortionists to some. The imperial historian recording these transactions considered them as cheating and, in the construction case just cited, accused the foreman of charging double the going rate and pocketing one-half the total payroll. 23 But other interpretations are possible and their behavior seemed different to many workers. The foreman, acting on the collective behalf of the construction workers, obtained better wages than the workers could have if negotiating individually. In this example, the Janissaries championed the interests of the Muslim urban workers, largely unskilled and semi-skilled. 18 19

F O 78/92, Constantinople, 20 July 1819, Rob. Uston (?) to Castlereagh. Reed, p. 236.

William Knight, Oriental Outlines or A Rambler's Recollections of a Tour in Greece and Tuscany in 1838 (London, 1838), pp. 135-136. Reed, p. 295. 2 ' R e e d , pp. 236, 260. 22

Turkey,

H e r e , 1 am placing a radically different interpretation on events than the sources that reported them, e.g., Uzunfar;ili, I, p. 501. 23

E r g i n , I, p. 626, quoting the historian Cevdet for the years 1233-1236, 1817-1820.

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This system also was used at shops and coffeehouses, and on ships in the harbor as well.24 And here, we find a key for reconciling the lower-working class character of the Janissaries with statements that the Janissaries controlled virtually all trades and professions by the early 19th century. We need to distinguish between the guilds and workers' groups in which Janissaries were members and those to which they offered protection. Assume that it is true that the Janissaries had brought all guilds under their protection but remained largely lower working class in composition. Two interpretations seem possible. The first sees the Janissaries as instruments by which the Turkish and Kurdish workers, un- and semi-skilled, exerted control and domination over the rest of the urban working class, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Thus, the early 19th century is a period of ascendancy by the lower working class over the rest of the Ottoman workers. In this view, the more skilled Ottoman workers would have welcomed Mahmud's military actions in 1826 and left the Janissaries to their fate. 25 But there is a second interpretation that, for the moment, seems more likely. In this view, the Janissaries participated in a mutually-advantageous alliance and protected Ottoman urban workers of all kinds against the encroachments of the state. This interpretation fits in very well with the assertions of contemporaries that the Janissaries were the instruments of popular sovereignty, guarding the urban population against the power of the throne, the central bureaucracy and officialdom in general. 26 When the final Janissary revolt began at daybreak in June 1826, the rebels very clearly focused on the state itself and sought to assure propertied merchants. Death to die givers of fetvas, to the writers of judicial acts, to our opponents, to all who wear the kayik [that is are in the upper classes].... Let all the merchants open up their shops. If so much as a single piece of glass is taken from diem, we will give them a diamond in exchange If any one of us does any mischief to any citizen, we will cut the culprit to pieces on the spot.27 Hear the words of a coffeehouse keeper at Sabanca, not far from Istanbul, when a European asked him about the recent destruction of the Janissaries. Sultan Mahmud, our master, does not want the Janissaries any longer. What is to become of us when the pashas and great ones will be able to 24

F O 78/92, Rob. Liston (?) to Castlereagh, 20 July 1819.

25

T h i s alliance between the various groups of Ottoman workers perhaps soured, for reasons p r e s e n t l y u n c e r t a i n . The b e h a v i o u r of the u r b a n skilled w o r k e r s in 1826 needs f u r t h e r investigation. Their failure to support the Janissary insurrection would h a v e left the lowerclass alone in its confrontation with the state. 2

^ S e e Gibb and Bowcn

27

I, p. 184, n. 3, citing Juchereau, p. 56.

E s a d , p. 72, as quoted by Reed, p. 195,

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eat the country at their ease. We'll have to flee... They [the government] will probably raise the taxes... 2 8 In the view of some, the destruction of the Janissaries meant that the people's "sole rampart against absolute power had been overthrown, that their liberty had been destroyed..." 2 9 They had become "a national militia attached to the immediate interests of the people..." 30 No wonder the ferocity of the sultan's repression in 1826. No wonder they were hated and feared by Mahmud, his centralizing state and his historians.

28

R e e d , p. 161, quoting Fontanier, 1 (1829), pp. 320-322.

29

R e e d , p. 262, n. 1, quoting Fontanier, I, pp. 320-322.

30

Fontanier, I, p. 26-7, quoted in Reed, p. 285.