A PORT AND ITS HINTERLAND: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF ...

A Port and Its Hinterland: An Environmental History of Izmir in the Late-Ottoman Period Item Type

text; Electronic Dissertation

Authors

Inal, Onur

Publisher

The University of Arizona.

Rights

Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

Download date

06/07/2018 05:54:22

Link to Item

http://hdl.handle.net/10150/579043

A PORT AND ITS HINTERLAND: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF IZMIR IN THE LATE OTTOMAN PERIOD

by Onur İnal __________________________ Copyright © Onur İnal 2015

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2015

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Onur İnal, titled A Port and Its Hinterland: An Environmental History of Izmir in the Late-Ottoman Period and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________________________________________________

Date: (04/22/2015)

Linda T. Darling _______________________________________________________________________

Date: (04/22/2015)

Julia Clancy-Smith _______________________________________________________________________

Date: (04/22/2015)

Katherine Morrissey

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: (04/22/2015) Dissertation Director: Linda T. Darling

2

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder.

ONUR İNAL

3

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many institutions and people. In the first place, I am indebted to Linda Darling, my dissertation advisor, for her support since the day I arrived in Tucson in January 2007. It has been a privilege being her PhD student at the University of Arizona. She has contributed to my intellectual development and influenced my thinking in Ottoman history as a PhD student. During the writing process of this dissertation she has encouraged me to find new ways of interpreting historical issues and offered her knowledge and advice in support of my writing efforts. Special thanks are also due to Julia Clancy-Smith and Katherine Morrissey, who have not only accepted being part of my dissertation committee, but also contributed to the improvement of this work with the feedback and constructive suggestions they have provided. The History Department of the University of Arizona as a whole also deserves special thanks for funding both writing and research processes of this dissertation and providing a supportive academic environment in which this dissertation could ripen. Among the Tucsonan colleagues and friends, I am particularly grateful to Ziad Abi Chakra, Seçil Uluışık, and Vikas Rathee for our long discussions and arguments. During the course of research in the archives and libraries in Tucson, Istanbul, Izmir, London, Paris, Marseille, Washington, D.C., Munich, and Hamburg, I have spent many hours and many people helped me find my way through books, papers, and documents. I would thank all of them, but I owe special gratitude to Melisa Urgandokur Pellegrino from the Ahmet Piriştina Municipal Archive and Museum, Izmir. Melisa did her best to provide books and articles. She also helped me to read and translate archival documents in Ottoman Turkish.

 

4  

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their unconditional support and encouragement during the course of this dissertation. Without the endless sacrifices of my parents Nafi and Nedret Inal, my sister Esin Inal Aysel, and my wife Sarah Inal, I would not have been able to finish this dissertation.  

 

5  

To my daughter, Leyla Marie

6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................ 4 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION............................................................................................ 9 WEIGHTS, MEASURES, AND CURRENCIES ................................................................... 10 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................. 11 LIST OF MAPS AND FIGURES ........................................................................................... 12 LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................. 13 ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................. 14 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 15 CHAPTER ONE: TOWARDS AND ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF AN OTTOMAN PORT CITY ............................................................................................................................ 23 Port-City: A Conceptual and Analytical Framework .................................................. 23 The Port-City of Izmir: Some Theoretical and Historical Perspectives ................ 31 The “Gateway City” .................................................................................................... 39 CHAPTER TWO: DISTINCT DICHOTOMY: IZMIR AND WESTERN ANATOLIA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ........................................................................................... 45 Geographical and Historical Layout of Ottoman Izmir .............................................. 46 The City: Between Life and Death .............................................................................. 53 The Countryside: Desertion, Isolation, and Poverty ................................................... 70 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 87 CHAPTER THREE: REVERSING FORTUNES: DEMOGRAPHIC, ECONOMICAL, AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROCESSES ........................................................................................ 89 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 89 Demographic Processes: The Resettlement of Migrants, Nomads, and Refugees ..... 91 Commercial Processes: The Emergence of a Market Economy and Trade Networks .... ................................................................................................................................... 111 Technological Processes: The Construction of a Railroad Network ........................ 125 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 142 CHAPTER FOUR: TRANSFORMING THE WESTERN ANATOLIAN LANDSCAPE . 144 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 144 Reclaiming the Land: The Spread of Cereal Cultivation .......................................... 147 7

Spinning the Land: Cotton Growing ......................................................................... 158 Conquering the Hills and Valleys: Fig and Vine Growing ....................................... 171 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 187 CHAPTER FIVE: A MEDITERRANEAN GATEWAY: IZMIR IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ............................................................................................................................ 191 Urban Commercial Space Before the Nineteenth Century ....................................... 192 Transformation of Urban Commercial Space ........................................................... 199 Punta: The Birth of a New Industrial District ........................................................... 205 Becoming the Storehouse of Anatolia: The Quay Project ........................................ 209 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 218 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 220 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 224

8

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

In transliterating Ottoman Turkish source materials, I have used modern Turkish orthography. I have preferred the modern Turkish spelling of Ottoman Turkish names and pharases that are still in use in modern Turkish (such as ‘ayan,’ ‘vakıf,’ and the like). I have italicized Turkish and Ottoman Turkish words and phrases the first time they appear, then in roman type only. Turkish or Ottoman Turkish names that are commonly found in English (such as ‘Janissaries’) are given with their English spelling. For the names of institutions, titles, terms, and concepts, I have used Turkish versions (such as ‘temettuat defterleri’) and given English equivalent either in paranthesis or as a footnote. For well-known place names, I have used English names rather than Turkish names (such as Aleppo instead Halep or Alexandria instead İskenderiye). In cases when a city, town, river, lake, or mountain has both Greek/Latin and Turkish or Ottoman and Turkish names, and are equally important, I have, with few exceptions, used Turkish names with original Greek, Latin, or Ottoman names in a parenthesis.

 

9  

WEIGHTS, MEASURES, AND CURRENCIES

All weights are given in pounds (lbs). 1 pound = 0.45 kilograms. Only for cotton, I have avoided converting bales to pounds. The bale was a frequently used unit in the nineteenthcentury Ottoman Empire. The weight of a bale was not equal everywhere and could vary from 250 to 300 pounds. All measures are given in US customary units, such as miles, feet, or acre. Currencies are given as they exist in the original source.

 

10  

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations of Archives and Libraries ACCM: AEF: ANF: AMAE: BOA: HHS: NARA: TNA:

Archives du Chambre de Commerce de Marseille, Marseille Archives Économiques et Financières, Paris Archives National Français, Paris Archives du Ministere des Affaires étrangères, Paris Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna The National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C The National Archives, London

Abbreviations of Sections, Books and Documents

A.DVN: AE: A.MKT.MHM: A.MKT.NZD: A.MKT.UM AP: BT: CC: DH.İD: DH.SAİD: FO: İ.MVL: İ.DH: İRA.MV: MD: ML.CRD: ML: MVL SP:

 

Divan (Beylikçi) Kalemi Affaires étrangères Sadaret Mektubi Mühimme Kalemi Sadaret Mektubi Kalemi Nezaret ve Deva’ir Evrakı Sadaret Mektubi Kalemi Umum Vilayat Evrakı Accounts and Papers Board of Trade Correspondance Consulaire Dahiliye Nezâreti İdare Evrakı Dahiliye Nezareti Sicill-i Ahvâl Komisyonu Defterleri Foreign Office İrâde Meclis-i Vâlâ İrâde – Dahiliye İrâde Meclis-i Vükelâ Mühimme Defterleri Maliye Nezareti, Ceride Odası Maliye Nezareti Meclis-i Vala Evrakı State Paper Offıce

11  

LIST OF MAPS AND FIGURES

Map 1: Ottoman Izmir and Its Hinterland in the Nineteenth Century .................................... 48 Map 2: Railroad Network in Western Anatolia in the 1880s ................................................ 138

Figure 1: The Caravan Bridge ………………………………………………………………. 79 Figure 2: Commencement of the Izmir-Aydın Railway (Oct. 31, 1857) ………………….. 135 Figure 3: Camels carrying figs and raisins to warehouses near the new quay ...................... 186 Figure 4: The Caravan Bridge ……………………………………………………………... 194 Figure 5: Entrepôts and warehouses near the new quay (c.a 1890) ...................................... 204 Figure 6: Port of Izmir before the construction of new quay (c.a 1865) …………………... 217 Figure 7: Port of Izmir after the construction of new quay (c.a 1880) …………………….. 217

 

12  

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Izmir’s population in the 19th century …………………………………………… 95 Table 2: Transportation costs in Western Anatolia ………………………………………. 129 Table 3: Western Anatolian railways; main lines and extensions ………………………... 140 Table 4: Cotton exports from Izmir (1857-1876) ………………………………………… 163 Table 5: Raisin exports from Izmir (1844-1884) …………………………………………. 182 Table 6: Annual average quantity of fig exports from Izmir (1876-1908) ……………….. 183

 

13  

ABSTRACT

This dissertation, based on Ottoman, Turkish, British, French, American, German, and Italian archival and published primary sources, tells the story of transformation of Izmir and its surrounding area in the late Ottoman period through the perspective of environmental history. In this period, roughly in the decades between the 1840s and 1890s, Izmir, thanks to the human and natural resources in its hinterland, grew rapidly in export trade and evolved into a gateway city, linking the fertile Western Anatolian valleys to world markets. By discussing the economic and ecological transformations in the Western Anatolian countryside, this dissertation aims to show that nature was a historical actor and an active factor in the social, economic, and environmental changes in Izmir and its hinterland in the late Ottoman Empire. In other words, by using the lens of environmental history, this dissertation seeks to document and analyze the interplay between the city and countryside and produce a unified history of Izmir and its hinterland in the late Ottoman period.

14

INTRODUCTION

In 1671, the famous Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Izmir and described the city with these words: “It is a fabulously rich port city, with shops and solid stone houses, boasting every type of mosque, religious school, dervish lodge, and spiritual work.”1 Evliya wrote that there were two thousand houses, twelve mosques, forty religious schools, forty coffeehouses, eleven public baths, seventy water fountains, seventy soap factories, two hundred taverns, seventeen soup kitchens for the poor, twenty boza2 halls, twenty tanneries, one harness shop, one candle factory, and one customs shed. He also provided information taken from the register that Ismail Pasha made of Izmir in 1657-58, relating that the city had ten Muslim, ten Greek Orthodox, ten Frank and Jewish, two Armenian, and one Gypsy mahalles.3 In the light of this information, it is possible to suggest that in the second half of the seventeenth century Izmir was a small but a prosperous and attractive trade center that hosted around ten thousand people from diverse ethnic and religious groups. Today, Izmir is an important port and Turkey’s third most populous city after Istanbul and Ankara, home to around three million people. It has been less than four centuries since Evliya Çelebi’s visit and Izmir has undergone profound political, social, and economic changes. What occurred during the past centuries created the framework for what the city has become today. Starting from the late seventeenth century, from being a small seaport, first it grew to become a regional port supplying the imperial capital, then it became a major transit port engaged in a flourishing export trade with Europe. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Izmir grew rapidly in external trade and became the marketplace of the expanding                                                                                                                           1

Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. Vol. IX (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1935), 92-98. Boza is a popular beverage in Turkey, as well as some other Balkan and Middle Eastern countries. It is a malt drink, made from maize, millet, wheat, or barley. 3 Evliya, 92-93. Mahalle was the smallest administrative unit in an Ottoman city, consisting of a mosque and at least fifty houses. Today, it refers to the neighborhood community, a social space, where people spend their daily lives. 2

  15    

Ottoman economy. The city owes its spectacular growth in this period to camel caravans, which brought merchandise from Eastern Anatolia, Iran, and Syria to the city for shipment to European markets. In the late nineteenth century, Izmir focused more on its agriculturally rich hinterland and successfully linked it into the expanding world economy. In this period, Izmir adapted rapidly to the changes in the structure and flow of international trade based on agricultural exports and manufactured imports, restored its infrastructure, sanitary systems, and storage and handling facilities, and integrated them into the developing communication and transport network. The high level of economic activities fueled by agricultural production in the hinterland translated into urban space in the form of physical, as well as social and cultural change. These changes entrenched Izmir’s position as the empire’s gateway linking the Western Anatolian hinterlands to world markets. The transformation of Izmir and its surrounding area in the late Ottoman period, roughly the decades between the 1840s and 1890s, is the main focus of this study. In this period, Izmir, by extending access to and control over the natural resources in its immediate hinterland, grew most rapidly in external trade and became the major link connecting the empire to Europe and the rest of the world. Settlers, migrants, and investors helped shape and reshape this urban environment by exploiting the natural resources and geographic assets available in Western Anatolia to create a hub of transportation of people and goods both inward to urban markets as well as outward to connect the hinterland markets to the global economy. By the end of the nineteenth century, Izmir eclipsed all other Ottoman ports in trade and, after Istanbul, became the quintessential example of Ottoman port-cities that connected the East and the West and facilitated the movement of people, goods, and ideas. Izmir has been the subject-matter of many historical studies and its history during the Ottoman period has been studied from several angles. In the existing studies, researchers have adopted an exclusively humanocentric or anthropocentric approach, regarding humans and

  16    

nature as two different poles. In their writings, they have considered humans as an active factor and a progressive force, and nature a passive and slowly changing entity. Moreover, they have seen the city and nature as opposites and underestimated the interplay between the two. Stressing the international systems into which its economy was integrated, most of these studies have, therefore, failed to produce a unified history of Izmir and its hinterlands, offering instead separate accounts of the two. This study addresses the shortcomings in the historiography of Izmir and Western Anatolia and suggests that environmental history, as a new way of creative and provisional rethinking, can help us to transcend the traditional dichotomy of city and country and provide a new interpretation of Izmir’s growth and prosperity in tandem with Western Anatolia in the nineteenth century. At this point, it would be useful to discuss briefly what environmental history is and why it is important to the study of Izmir and its surrounding. Environmental history is a relatively new and developing field of research. It appeared as a sub-discipline in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and since then has spread to different parts of the world. For the past three or four decades, historians throughout the world have looked for definitions of environmental history, identified its key concepts, and put forth methods and paradigms. Roderick Nash, a pioneer historian in the field, was one of the first to define environmental history, which, to him “refers to the past contact of man with his total habitat.”4 Donald Worster has likewise proposed that environmental history is “the interaction between human cultures and the environment in the past.”5 Similarly, John R. McNeill, has suggested that it is “[...] the history of the mutual relations between humankind and the rest of nature.”6 There are several other definitions of environmental history, but the very basic                                                                                                                           4

Roderick Nash, “American Environmental History: A New Teaching Frontier,” Pacific Historical Review 41 (1972): 363. 5 Donald Worster, “Doing Environmental History,” in The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, ed., Donald Worster (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 289. 6 John R. McNeill, “Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History,” History and Theory 42, no. 1 (2003): 5-43.

  17    

definition is that it is a discipline that researches the interaction between humans and their natural environment throughout time and explores the impact of environmental change on people’s lives as well as people’s use, perception, management, and conservation of their surrounding environment.7 Contrary to the growing number of environmental historians and environmental historical studies in North America, Europe, and other parts of the world, environmental history has remained a relatively neglected field in Ottoman history. The number of books and articles in this relatively new subfield in Ottoman studies can be counted on the fingers of one hand.8 To mention some recent studies, Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth has discussed “mutating patterns of settlement and rural production -and their effects on the landscape” in the Ottoman Empire.9 William Griswold and Sam White have researched how a climate related event, the so-called Little Ice Age, triggered the Celali Rebellions in the Ottoman Empire and nearly brought down the empire in the early seventeenth century.10 Alan Mikhail has studied the control, use, management, and conservation of water resources and canals in Ottoman Egypt in the period stretching from 1675 to 1820 from the perspective of environmental history.11 The forces of change in Ottoman port-cities, on the other hand, have been analyzed from a variety of perspectives, but only a few port-city-specific studies have focused on the creation                                                                                                                           7

For other definitions of environmental history, see: Richard White, “American Environmental History: The Development of a New Historical Field,” Pacific Historical Review 54 (Aug. 1985): 297-335; Donald Worster, “Transformations of the Earth: Toward an Agroecological Perspective in History,” Journal of American History 76 (March 1990): 1087-1106; and Douglas R. Weiner, “A Death-Defying Attempt to Articulate a Coherent Definition of Environmental History,” Environmental History 10, no. 3 (July 2005): 404-20. 8 For a historiographical review of Ottoman environmental history, see: Onur Inal, “Environmental History as an Emerging Field in Ottoman Studies: An Historiographical Overview,” Journal of Ottoman Studies 38 (2011): 125. 9 Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth, “Ecology of the Ottoman Lands,” in The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839, ed. Suraiya N. Faroqhi, vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of Turkey, ed. Kate Fleet, Suraiya N. Faroqhi, and Reşat Kasaba (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 18-43. 10 William Griswold, “Climatic Change: A Possible Factor in the Social Unrest of Seventeenth Century Anatolia” in Humanist and Scholar: Essays in Honor of Andreas Tietze, ed. Heath W. Lowry and Donald Quataert (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), 37-57 and Sam White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 11 Alan Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). See also: idem, “The Nature of Plague in Late Eighteenth-Century Egypt,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008): 249-75.

  18    

of a web of interrelations between city and countryside, thus can be fitted into environmental history. For example, Elena Frangakis-Syrett, in her study of Patras, argued that the economic boom the city experienced in the nineteenth century was due to “the result of successful monoculture -the production and exportation of currants to the international market- and its ability to respond to the increasing demands of this market for its produce.”12 Meltem Toksöz, on the other hand, investigated the emergence of large-scale cotton agriculture in the Çukurova plain and the consequent growth of the port-city of Mersin in the Eastern Mediterranean.13 This study is a step forward in the construction of a unified history of Izmir and Western Anatolia and a contribution to the budding field of Ottoman environmental history. Even though it speaks to a variety of historical approaches and discourses and cuts across traditional historiographic boundaries within the discipline of history, it focuses on environmental history, and tries to combine it with others in new ways. It highlights the significance of geographical and climatic advantages and natural resources i.e., water, soil, vegetation, etc., and other features of the landscape, which together promoted the settlement of people and encouraged them to develop networks of trade and production. It considers the relationships between cotton fields and mills, vineyards and wineries, and fig gardens and warehouses, and brings human and natural histories of Izmir and its surrounding area together. In this respect, it situates the city’s commercial growth and prosperity in the broader context of Ottoman environmental history and contributes to the writing of intertwined and symbiotic histories of city and country in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire.

                                                                                                                          12

Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “Patras,” Review 16 (Fall 1993): 411-34 and idem, “Monoculture in NineteenthCentury Greece and the Port-City of Patras,” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 20, no. 2 (1994): 9-34. 13 Meltem Toksöz, Nomads, Migrants and Cotton in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Making of the AdanaMersin Region, 1850-1908 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). For other studies of the same author on the subject, see: “Ottoman Mersin: The Making of an Eastern Mediterranean Port-town,” New Perspectives on Turkey 31 (Fall 2004): 71-90 and “Bir Coğrafya, Bir Ürün, Bir Bölge: 19. Yüzyılda Çukurova,” Kebikeç 21 (Spring 2006): 97110.

  19    

In the introduction of his influential study of Chicago and the Great West, William Cronon noted that “environmental history of a single city made little sense if written in isolation from the countryside around.”14 In another study, Donald Worster stated that “the natural environment is not really passive but is rather a powerful determining force throughout history.”15 And more recently, Timo Myllntaus wrote that “the environment can be an explanatory factor and active actor in history.”16 It is also my contention in the light of the quoted statements above that a history of an Ottoman port-city is not complete when written without reference to the natural and human resources in its hinterlands that furnished the basis of that city’s commercial success. In this study, I also argue that nature, as an active actor and a decisive factor in history, had a crucial role in the shaping of the Western Anatolian landscapes in the nineteenth century. Environmental history has an original perspective on the past of Izmir, yet there are some difficulties inherent in writing the history from this perspective. Two great conflagrations in 1845 and 1922 destroyed court records along with other local sources that might have given information about the city and its surroundings. Moreover, locals have not left diaries, letters, and other written and visual sources with which to snapshot the social, economic, and environmental conditions in Izmir in the nineteenth century. In view of the paucity of local sources, therefore, it is not surprising that most of the studies on the urban history of Izmir during the Ottoman period rely heavily upon foreign archival and published sources. In this study, too, dispatches of foreign representatives stationed in Izmir, regular diplomatic correspondences, parliamentary papers and accounts, and statistics and tables have                                                                                                                           14

Cronon, xix. Donald Worster, “History as Natural History: An Essay on Theory and Method,” Pacific Historical Review 53, no. 1 (1984): 5. 16 Timo Myllntaus, “Environment in Explaining History: Restoring Humans as Part of Nature,” in Encountering the Past in Nature: Essays in Environmental History, 2nd ed., ed. Timo Myllntaus and Mikko Saikku (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001), 157. 15

  20    

been used in order to offer an original interpretation of economic and environmental processes in Izmir and its surrounding during the period under investigation. It is not easy to get a complete picture of the region from diplomatic sources only; therefore, news and articles in European newspapers and magazines and accounts and memoirs of European observers have also been utilized. However, we should still be careful with such accounts and memoirs because European observers intentionally dispraised Ottoman lands in their value judgments to facilitate European governments’ political, economic, and cultural involvement with the Ottoman Empire. The issues they presented such as urban pollution and congestion were not peculiar to Ottoman cities and industrializing Europe was grappling with similar issues; yet, they blatantly distorted and misrepresented what they witnessed in Western Anatolia. For that reason, their descriptions, both textual and visual, should be read very critically and the information they provide should not be taken for granted. Although foreign sources form the backbone of this study and it draws on a comprehensive array of published and unpublished sources in English, German, French, Italian, and Greek languages, it also uses what is available relating to the region’s natural and human history in the archives and libraries in Turkey to reconstruct Izmir’s Ottoman past together with the rural history of Western Anatolia. In this respect, I have benefited from various bodies of Ottoman archival and published material, such as the ahkam (imperial judgments) and mühimme (central state decrees) registers, the irades (sultanic decrees), as well as the salnames (almanacs), which all contain bits and pieces of information regarding social and economic life in the city and countryside. And last, a few words about the organization of the study. Even though the chapters are organized in a sequential manner with one leading to the other to track the developments in the region, this study does not follow a strict chronology and rather applies a processoriented approach to the environmental history of Izmir. Chapter One is designed to give the   21    

reader an idea about how port-cities have been classified and categorized in the past. It also provides a theoretical and historiographical overview of the concept of the port-city. At the end, it proposes the gateway city model as an alternative framework for interpreting the economic and environmental changes in nineteenth-century Izmir and Western Anatolia. Chapter Two presents the geographical and historical layout of the region and then goes on to discuss the economic and ecological separation between the city and its surroundings in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It focuses on the unfavorable social, economic, and environmental conditions that emerged as a result of this separation and the ways people coped with them. Chapter Three seeks to explore major processes that ended the economic and ecological separation of the city and promoted Izmir’s evolution from a transit port-city into a gateway city from the mid-nineteenth century on. In this respect it analyzes demographic, economic, and technological changes such as the creation of new settlement patterns, the emergence of commercial networks, and the development of modern transportation technology in Western Anatolia. Chapter Four explores the distinct but overlapping stories of cereals, cotton, and figs and raisins and relates the stories of these crops to the creation of a symbiotic relationship between city and country in late nineteenth-century Western Anatolia. Furthermore, it discusses how these products spearheaded the creation of a unified economy that was linked to global markets through the port-city of Izmir. Finally, Chapter Five focuses on the dynamics of growth and spatial changes in late nineteenth century Izmir.

  22    

CHAPTER I TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF AN OTTOMAN PORT-CITY

The fundamental goal of this study is to provide a more rounded picture of the portcity of Izmir and its relation to its hinterlands and forelands in the late Ottoman period with the benefit of environmental history. As the initial step for this goal, this chapter opens with a definition of the port-city concept, as well as the concepts of hinterland and foreland, and then it discusses briefly the port-city classifications and categorizations made by researchers. After a review of the secondary literature on the port-city of Izmir to give an overview of the current state of research, it finally goes to analyze the “gateway city” model which is to be used as a frame in the interpretation of economic and environmental changes in Izmir and its hinterlands in the nineteenth century.

Port-City: A Conceptual and Analytical Framework

“What is a port-city?” It is not an easy task to find an answer to that simple question. However, there is an answer for the question what a port-city is not: A port-city is not merely an urban place that happens to be on a shoreline. Nor is it a city with a port only, a constellation of buildings and facilities designed for the ships to load and unload. A port-city is something more than an urban settlement or a site oriented towards water. Even though a port-city is unthinkable without its port, the concept evokes a realm that is beyond the physical space of a port. A port-city symbolizes a window from the land to the sea, lake or river, and the other way around. In this way, as the Latin etymology of the word portus -meaning a passage   23    

suggests, a port-city is an avenue of interaction and interchange between diverse societies, nations, groups, and cultures. The port is an indispensable part of a port-city, since it enables the movement of peoples and commodities that is vital to its existence. The port animates the shoreline, connects a coastal city and its surroundings to the world outside, encourages commercial and cultural activity, and channels the flow of people, goods, ideas, and manners. The port renders a city on a shoreline “a hub in dense networks of maritime connections through which people, goods, ideas, and meanings flowed.”17 The concept “port-city” encompasses a multitude of definitions, connotations, and functions. In geographical terms, a port-city is a territory where the water and the land converge. Its history, character, and essential functions are determined by its geographical position between the sea, lake, or river and the land. In political terms, a port-city is a polity sui generis that has not much in common with cities in the interior but with other port-cities that occupied a similar political role. It has its own unique developmental path, relatively free from the regulations and restrictions of central government. In economic terms, the concept port-city indicates an open market, a meeting place of buyers and sellers. It is ideally suited for trade and business because it is usually located at the intersection of two or more economic zones. In anthropological terms, a port-city is a place where a variety of nations, ethnicities, and religions meet, clash, mix, and amalgamate. It is a place where “races, cultures and ideas, as well as goods from a variety of places jostle, mix, and enrich each other and the life of the city.”18 In cultural terms, on the other hand, a port-city is a place where commodities, values, beliefs, and manners are exposed, consumed, and transmitted. It is a place of cross-cultural encounters and exchanges. And finally, in social terms, a port-city is not only a place which itinerant merchants, artists, soldiers, diplomats, and tourists travel to or                                                                                                                           17

Henk Driessen, “Mediterranean Port Cities: Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” History and Anthropology 16, no. 1 (2005): 129-30. 18 Rhoads Murphey, “On the Evolution of the Port City,” in Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th20th Centuries,  ed. Frank Broeze (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989),  225.

  24    

from, but also a place where cosmopolitan and hybrid identities come into existence as a result of a fusion of cultures and identities. It is a place inhabited by people with a specific maritime character. Some have referred to these people as the “littoral society,” “a community extending inwards from the coast with porous frontiers acting as filters through which the salt of the sea is gradually replaced by the silt of the land.”19

Classification of Port-Cities

Port-cities, because of their privileged position at the interface of two or more distinct economic systems, cultures, and environments, have long fascinated scholars. A large number of studies on port-cities verifies the intense scholarly interest in the subject. Because the analysis of port-cities can be based on a variety of criteria, different systems of classification have been employed. Geographers have been at the forefront in making classifications and analyses of port-cities. Political scientists, historians, urban sociologists, and urban anthropologists have also analyzed port-cities from their own point of view. Because there is no clear-cut boundary between these disciplines, researchers who have studied port-cities have frequently crossed disciplinary boundaries and benefited from each other’s models and approaches to investigate physiographical, topological, geopolitical, historical, social, and cultural dimensions of port-cities, as well as the role of a port-city within a broader regional or global economy. Geographers have studied port-cities in a number of ways. Earlier, they investigated the economic role of port-cities as sites of industrial production.20 Then, they studied port-

                                                                                                                          19

Michael N. Pearson, “Littoral Society: The Case for the Coast,” The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History 7 (1985): 1-8. 20 William Alonso, “Location Theory,” in Regional Development and Planning, ed. John Friedmann and William Alonso (Cambridge; MA: MIT Press, 1964), 78-106; Richard O. Goss, Studies in Maritime Economics (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Peter Dicken, Global Shift: Industrial Change in a Turbulent

  25    

cities within the framework of regional development and planning.21 Finally, the most recent group of port studies has dealt with the reorganization of the waterfront and the regeneration of old port areas for new port uses.22 As a result, geographers have come up with a variety of categorizations in the study of port-cities. Broadly speaking, three parameters have been effective in the classification of portcities: the site, the situation, and the function(s). If there are three major parameters along which to analyze port-cities, there are three major questions being asked in regard with these parameters: “why,” “wherefore,” and “what.” Regardless of the discipline, researchers have attempted to explain in their studies the choice made by certain people or group of people to settle in that particular location and asked the question “why [is the port-city located] there?” Weigend argued that the site is of outstanding significance for the development of a port-city. According to him, the site is one of the most important physical factors that can be used to explain the development of a port-city. He underlined the necessity of looking at where the port-city is located, both in terms of water and the land that surrounds it, as well as the physiographic and topographic factors, such as easiness of its entrance, tidal range, depth of water, and climate.23 To him, the site is the basic parameter for designating a port-city as a “river port,” a “coastal port,” or a “lake port.”24 Hoyle concurred with Weigend and claimed that the physical conditions of the site, which is “the area of land and associated waters on                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             World (London: Harper & Row, 1986); and Daniel Todd, Industrial Dislocation: The Case of Global Shipbuilding (London: Routledge, 1991). 21 Edward J. Taafle, “Transport Expansion in Underdeveloped Countries,” Geographical Review 53 (1963): 50229; A. James Rose, “Dissent from Down Under: Metropolitan Primacy as the Normal State,” Pacific Viewpoint 7 (1966): 1-27; H. C. Weinand, “A Spatio-Temporal Model of Economic Development,” Australian Geographical Studies 10 (1972): 95-100; R. Robinson, “Modeling the Port as an Operational System: A Perspective for Research,” Economic Geography 52 (1976): 71-86; Brian S. Hoyle and David A. Pinder, eds., European Port Cities in Transition (London: Belhaven Press, 1992). 22 Frederick Cooper, On the African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial Mombasa (New Haven, MA: Yale University Press, 1987); Dale H. Porter, The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology, and Society in Victorian London (Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 1998); Kim Dovey, et al., Fluid City: Transforming Melbourne’s Urban Waterfront (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005); and Gene Desfor and Jennefer Laidley, ed., Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). 23 Guido G. Weigend, “Some Elements in the Study of Port Geography,” Geographical Review 48, no. 2 (Apr. 1958): 186. 24 Ibid., 190.

  26    

which the port and port town are actually developed,” are crucial to the development of a port-city.25 In short, it can be said that the geographical location, or the site, is important because it has a determining power on the development of a port-city. The second major question asked by researchers is “wherefore, or for what, [is the port-city located] there?” It is the geological position, or the situation, of a port-city in a broader sense, which expounds the economic and cultural role it plays. Weigend suggested that the situation may have physical, social, or cultural implications.26 Hoyle expanded Weigend’s suggestion and highlighted the importance of economic environments within which a port-city is situated.27 Also, it is possible to classify a port-city according to its physical orientation, such as an “interior port,” away from the open sea, or an “exterior port,” directly on the open sea or ocean. Interior situations are preferred for reasons of security whereas exterior situations are sought for predominantly economic reasons. In the development of a port, situation plays a determining role and ports have been classified according to their situation as a “global port,” a “national port,” a “regional port,” or a “colonial port.” Hoyle suggested that four dimensions related to the site and situation determine the spatial development of ports; the water situation, the land situation, the water site, and the land site. The water situation and the land situation refer to the extent and pattern of economic development in the forelands and hinterlands. The water site and the land site, on the other hand, indicate the physical and geographical spaces. The initial stimulus to the development of a port is largely determined by the water site, however its later prosperity is ensured only if the conditions in the other three dimensions are fulfilled. In other words, as Hoyle maintained, primary port-cities develop where all four dimensions are ideal.28

                                                                                                                          25

Brian S. Hoyle, The Seaports of East Africa: A Geographical Study (Nairobi: East African Pub. House, 1967). Weigend, 186. 27 Hoyle, The Seaports of East Africa, 7-8. 28 Brian S. Hoyle, “Maritime Perspectives on Ports and Port System: The Case of East Africa,” in Brides of the Sea, 191. 26

  27    

Finally, researchers have asked the question “what [is the function of the port-city] there?” The function of a port-city is related to its socio-economic development and refers to its main political, economic, social, and military activities. According to the functional classification made by Morgan, there appears nine different types of ports: “naval ports,” “fishing ports,” “ferry ports,” “harbors of refuge,” “ports of call,” “trans-shipment ports,” “entrepôt ports and free ports,” “outports,” and “coastwise and short-sea ports.”29 James H. Bird, on the other hand, put forth a distinction between “seaport” and “sea port terminal.” The former functions as transport node whereas the latter is a location for industries based on bulk imports.30 Classifications and categorizations made by geographers, economists, political scientists, and urban sociologists can help one to understand the trajectory of development of a certain port-city. However, there is always a probability that one port can fit into more than one category and has more than one function. In terms of functionality, it is usually the case that great port-cities perform a multitude of functions and develop complex networks of connections and relationships. They have a mixture of functions, although each great port-city has its own unique mix. In other words, the physical, economic, social, and cultural evolution of a port-city and its role as an avenue that conveys the movement of people and goods is a complex process. The site, situation, or function of a port-city itself is not always enough to explain this evolution. Traffic of any kind at a particular time is based on complex physical and human factors, which can be categorized, but must be studied carefully in each case.

                                                                                                                          29 30

Frederick W. Morgan, Ports and Harbours (London: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1952). James H. Bird, Seaports and Seaport Terminals (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1971).

  28    

Hinterland and Foreland

Geographers started investigating the role of hinterland and foreland on the development of port-cities as early as the 1950s.31 Since then, they have pioneered in the use and definition of the terms hinterland and foreland as well. They have made several attempts to define and interpret them. Arthur J. Sargent was the first scholar to employ the term hinterland to refer to “an area in relation to an outlet or group of outlets.”32 Eugene van Cleef used it to designate “the area that utilizes the port for both the export and import of commodities, services, or ideas.”33 The Dutch geographer Willem E. Boerman suggested that “it is the hinterland combined with transport links that gives the key to growth of port trade and development of port industries,” and added, “no port structure can be understood when not seen together with its hinterland.”34 Another geographer, Frederick W. Morgan, on the other hand, proposed that the term hinterland offers something more than “a simple parceling out of the country behind a port” and argued that “a port has a great number of hinterlands.”35 Morgan suggested that these hinterlands exist in a hierarchy based on three factors; the nature of commodities, the mechanism of maritime transport, and the role of political decisions. According to him, there are three different types of hinterland; “primitive hinterland,” “raw material hinterland,” and “liner port hinterland.”36 The American geographer Guido G.                                                                                                                           31

Guido G. Weigend, “The Problem of Hinterland and Foreland as Illustrated by the Port of Hamburg,” Economic Geography 32 (1956): 1-16; James H. Bird, The Major Seaports of the United Kingdom (London: Hutchinson, 1963); André Vigarié, Les grands ports de commerce de la Seine au Rhin: Leur évolution devant l'industrialisation des arrière-pays (Paris: SABRI, 1964); Brian S. Hoyle, “East African Seaports: An Application of the Concept of ‘Anyport’,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44 (1968): 16383; David Hilling, “The Evolution of the Major Ports of West Africa,” Geographical Journal 135 (1969): 36579; and N. R. Elliott, “Hinterland and Foreland as Illustrated by the Port of Tyne,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47 (1969): 153-70. 32 Arthur J. Sargent, Seaports and Hinterlands (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1938), 16. 33 Eugene van Cleef, “East Baltic Ports and Boundaries with Special Reference to Konigsberg,” Geographical Review 35, no. 2 (Apr. 1945): 157. 34 Willem E. Boerman, “The Need for Special Examination of Particular Aspects of Port Geography,” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 42 (Dec. 1951): 348. 35 Morgan, 111. 36 Idem, “Observations on the Study of Hinterlands in Europe,” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 42 (Dec. 1951): 366-73.

  29    

Weigend expanded all the definitions previously made and defined a hinterland as “organized and developed land space which is connected with a port by means of transport lines, and which receives or ships goods through that port.”37 He further suggested a classification for hinterland to be made according to the flow of commodities and stated that “we speak of the import hinterlands as the areas of destination for goods imported through the ports and of export hinterlands as the areas where outbound shipments of the port originate.”38 Last, but not least, the British geographer Brian S. Hoyle classified a hinterland on the basis of the lateral traffic between it and a port-city as “primitive hinterland” and “complex hinterland.” To him, the former is linked with only one port, whereas the latter has access to two or more ports.39 In this study, the hinterland is used to refer to a geographic area which lies behind a center of economic and political control and supplies this center with agricultural and trade goods and workforce. It supplies the port-city with agricultural and trade goods. In this area, rural residents, whom I refer to as “hinterlanders,” are dispersed in small communities, living distant from but connected to the port-city. The hinterlanders, although they are physically apart from the city, are psychologically a part of it. Furthermore, they are interconnected with the port-city in two significant ways. First, they are the providers of raw materials, producers of commodities, cultivators of foodstuffs the port-city needs either for its own use or for export. Second, they are consumers of commodities, merchandise, and luxury items either manufactured in the city or imported through its port. In a sense, a hinterland is an entity that is geographical in concept, but economic, social, and cultural in meaning. It stands for the area of political, socioeconomic, and cultural sphere of influence of the port-city in the surrounding region and beyond and vice versa. A hinterland implies an integrated pattern of activity and a symbiotic relationship between the port-city and countryside.                                                                                                                           37

Weigend, “Some Elements,” 192. Ibid., 194. 39 Hoyle, The Seaports of East Africa, 6-7. 38

  30    

The term “foreland”, on the other hand, was first defined by Weigend as “areas which are connected with that port by means of ocean carriers.”40 Even though researchers such as Marcel Amphoux from the French school of geography had previously emphasized the relative significance of maritime relations of the port-city, it was Weigend who went beyond the ‘maritime determinism’ of French geographers and developed a much more balanced understanding of a foreland.41 Weigend argued that both hinterland and foreland are important to the development of a port city; a hinterland has a role in the organization and functioning of land, whereas a foreland organizes maritime space “in order to serve as a connecting link between land areas.”42

The Port-City of Izmir: Some Theoretical and Historical Perspectives

Izmir, especially in what concerns the city’s importance in Ottoman and Turkish history and its place in the world economy, has featured in the research agenda of both Turkish and foreign historians for a long time. Commonalities in its development trajectory, urban forms, and socio-economic and spatial characteristics with other cities on the Mediterranean coast of the Ottoman Empire have encouraged historians to analyze Izmir under the rubric of “Ottoman port-city.”43 Influenced by the changing trends in the study of Ottoman port-cities and following more or less the sequential logic of historiography,                                                                                                                           40

Weigend, “The Problem of Hinterland and Foreland,” 3. Marcel Amphoux, “Les fonctions portuaires,” Revue de La Porte Océane 5, no. 54 (1949): 19-22; idem, “Des horizons terrestres aux horizons maritimes de l’activité portuaire,” Revue de La Porte Océane 6, no. 57 (1950): 15-18; idem, “Ports intérieurs et ports extérieurs,” Revue de La Porte Océane 6, no. 61 (1950): 5-7; and idem, “Géographie portuaire et économie portuaire,” Revue de La Porte Océane 7, no. 70 (1951): 5-8. 42 Weigend, “The Problem of Hinterland and Foreland,” 3. 43 For a theoretical and methodological framework on Ottoman port-cities, see: Reşat Kasaba, Çağlar Keyder, and Faruk Tabak, “Eastern Mediterranean Port Cities and Their Bourgeoisies: Merchants, Political Projects, and Nation-States,” Review 10, no. 1 (Summer 1986): 121-35; Çağlar Keyder, Y. Eyüp Özveren, and Donald Quataert, “Port-Cities in the Ottoman Empire. Some Theoretical and Historical Perspectives,” Review 16, no. 4 (Fall 1993): 519-57; and Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, eds., The Ottoman City between East and West, Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), especially “Istanbul” and “Izmir” chapters. 41

  31    

historians initially studied the city from the viewpoint of political history. In the 1970s and 80s, they moved to economic history; and finally they have paid close attention to the approaches and methods of social and cultural history. Almost all of the earlier research on Izmir was done in a period when history was written under the influence of nationalist ideology. Therefore, it took a nationalist approach to the city’s history and was biased in favor of a Kemalist interpretation of historical developments in the city.44 In these studies, researchers overlooked the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural past of the city, and even talked about the destructive impact of non-Muslim communities over Muslims (Turks), who, according to them, were the “real” inhabitants of the city. Tuncer Baykara is among those who stressed the “Turkishness” of the city and claimed that Izmir has been a predominantly Turkish city for the past five centuries. The Turkish army’s “liberation” of Izmir has a very high symbolic value in Turkey and the event has remained a significant point of reference for nationalist historiography. Even though the nationalist approach came under attack later, writing the history of Izmir from a nationalistic point of view has dominated the academic literature in Turkey to this day.45 The opening of new analytical and theoretical paths in the academia of the United States in the 1960s and 1970s has encouraged historians to move beyond nationalist historiography and develop new perspectives to the study of Ottoman port-cities. The American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory was very influential for a time and it was globally embraced by historians, political scientists, and sociologists, who looked for a globalistic interpretation of the encounters between the different types of markets and economic systems. Wallerstein argued in his “world-systems theory” that a world is                                                                                                                           44

Raif Nezihi, İzmir’in Tarihi (Izmir: Bilgi Matbaası, 1927); Adnan Bilget, Son Yüzyılda İzmir Şehri (Izmir: Meşher Basımevi, 1949); and Tuncer Baykara, İzmir Şehri Tarihi (Izmir: Ege University, 1974). 45 To mention a few of many books and articles written from this point of view: Nail Moralı, Mütarekede İzmir: Önceleri ve Sonraları (Istanbul: Tekin Yayınevi, 1976); Engin Berber, Sancılı Yıllar--İzmir 1918-1922: Mütareke ve Yunan İşgali Döneminde İzmir Sancağı (Ankara: Ayraç Yayınevi, 1997); and Zafer Çakmak, İzmir ve Çevresinde Yunan İşgali ve Rum Mezalimi, 1919-1922 (Istanbul: Yeditepe, 2007).

  32    

composed of culturally different societies that are interconnected through the exchange of food and raw materials.46 Shifting the focus from the nation-state to the global world economy, Wallerstein suggested that the core areas, which were the centers of industrialism and capitalism, controlled the peripheral areas, where capitalist production did not prevail, as early as the sixteenth century. World-systems theory has encouraged Ottoman historians to think about the history of the modern Mediterranean as a whole and has promoted the publication of monographs and texts focusing on the place of Ottoman port-cities in world history. In these studies, researchers have interpreted the social and economic transformations Ottoman port-cities underwent in the last two or three hundred years within the context of core-periphery relations.47 A growing number of historians have approached the case of the incorporation of Western Anatolia into global markets within the general framework of Western Europe’s commercial discovery of the Ottoman Empire and the pivotal role of Izmir in this process. Daniel Goffman made a close reading of both Ottoman and European archival material and wrote about the sudden rise of Izmir from an Anatolian backwater to a major entrepôt in the                                                                                                                           46

Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 3 vols. (New York: Academic Press, 1974-1989). A collection of Wallerstein’s most important essays is presented in Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979). For the studies that use Wallerstein’s theoretical framework, see: Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Ottoman Empire and the Capitalist World-Economy: Some Questions for Research,” Review II, no. 3 (Winter 1979): 389-90; Klaus Kreiser, “Über den ‘Kernraum’ des Osmanischen Reiches,” in Die Türkei in Europa – Beiträge des Südosteuropa-Arbeitskreises der Deutschen Forschunggemeinschaft zum IV. Internationalen Sudosteuropa-Kongreß, ed. Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1979), 53-63; Murat Çizakça, “Incorporation of the Middle East into the European World-Economy,” Review 8, no. 3 (Winter 1985): 353-78; Immanuel Wallerstein, Hale Decdeli, and Reşat Kasaba, “The Incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the World-Economy,” in The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, ed. Huri İslamoğlu-İnan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 88-100; Reşat Kasaba, “Incorporation of the Ottoman Empire, 1750-1820,” Review 10, no. 5/6 (Summer/Fall 1987): 805-47; Immanuel Wallerstein and Faruk Tabak, “The Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean, and the European World-Economy, c. 1560-1800,” in The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilization, ed. Kemal Çiçek (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000), 120-27. 47 Michael Reimer, “Ottoman-Arab Seaports in the Nineteenth Century: Social Change in Alexandria, Beirut, Tunis,” in Cities in the World-System, ed. Reşat Kasaba (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 135-56; Keyder, Özveren, and Quataert, 519; Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “Commercial Growth and Economic Development in the Middle East: Izmir, from the Early 18th to the Early 20th Centuries,” in Ottoman Izmir, ed. Maurits H. van den Boogert (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2007), 1-38; idem, “Le développement d’un port méditerranéen d’importance internationale: Smyrne (1700-1914),” in Smyrne, la ville oubliée? Mémoires d’un grand port ottoman, ed. Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 2006), 21-49.

  33    

late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and the role of the Ottoman government in this rise.48 Mübahat Kütükoğ lu and Zeki Arıkan, likewise, utilized Ottoman archival material in their studies about the economic and social history of Izmir in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.49 Reşat Kasaba, one of Wallerstein’s students, was a pioneer in discussing Western Anatolia’s inclusion into the capitalist world-economy within the framework of worldsystems theory.50 In his study, based mostly on British sources, Kasaba argued that Izmir, together with other port-cities such as Salonika, Beirut, and Alexandria, was a “peripheral city,” connecting peripheral areas, which were bound to provide raw materials and agricultural products to the global markets, to the core cities such as London, Liverpool, and Amsterdam, in exchange for finished goods, textiles, machinery, and technology. Izmir as a peripheral city, according to his designation, dominated overlapping commercial networks, and in return, it was shaped by its economic functions as a periphery serving the core countries. Orhan Kurmuş, on the other hand, discussed the role of foreign capital and investments in the development of Izmir in the nineteenth century in an otherwise provocative study of British economic supremacy in Western Anatolia.51 Despite the interest in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth centuries, until the 1990s no one had actually studied the socio-economic formation of Izmir and its surrounding area in the eighteenth century. This major lacuna has since been filled by the studies of two economic historians. Necmi Ülker made good use of Ottoman primary sources to reconstruct the commercial rivalry between the French and British trade colonies in the city between 1688

                                                                                                                          48

Daniel Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550-1650, (Seattle, WA: Washington University Press, 1990) and idem, “Izmir from Village to Colonial Port City,” in The Ottoman City between East and West, 79134. 49 Mübahat Kütükoğlu, XV. ve XVI. Asırlarda İzmir Kazasının Sosyal ve İktisadi Yapısı (Izmir: Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2000) and Zeki Arıkan, “İzmir in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in Three Ages of Izmir, ed. Enis Batur (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1993), 59-69. 50 Reşat Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy: The Nineteenth Century (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988). 51 Orhan Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Bilim Yayınları, 1977).

  34    

and 1740.52 Elena Frangakis-Syrett, on the other hand, was the first historian to study carefully, besides British, American, and Italian, French archival material to provide a picture of the city in the period preceding the so-called “peripheralization.”53 She also researched thoroughly the active role played by European merchants in the connection of Izmir to capitalist European markets.54 In their studies, both Ülker and Frangakis-Syrett underlined the fact that Izmir was a city not to be ignored in the world of trade and commerce; and, by virtue of its unique geographical location, it played a critical role in the integration of Ottoman Empire into the world economy. Even though these historians eschewed the externalist perspective of the world-systems theory, they were still influenced by its concepts and analyses. The years following the general studies dealing with the economic history of Izmir from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries saw also the publication of a number of studies examining single commodities; we have books and articles on commodities such as cotton,55 silk56, mohair yarn,57 and madder root,58 all traded in Izmir in the past.

                                                                                                                          52

Necmi Ülker, XVII. ve XVIII. Yüzyıllarda İzmir Şehri Tarihi (Izmir: Akademi Kitabevi, 1994). See also: idem, “Batılı Gözlemcilere Göre XVII. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında İzmir Şehri ve Ticari Sorunları,” Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi 12 (1982): 317-54; idem, “The Emergence of Izmir as a Mediterranean Commercial Center for the French and English Interests 1688-1740,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 4, no. 1 (Summer 1987): 137; and idem, “XVII.Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında İzmir'deki İngiliz Tüccarlarına Dair Ticarî Problemlerle İlgili Belgeler,” Belgeler 14, no. 18 (1989-92): 261-320. 53 Elena Frangakis-Syrett, The Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700-1820) (Athens: Center for Asia Minor Studies, 1992); idem, “The Ottoman Port of Izmir in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, 1695-1820,” Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée 39, no. 1 (1985): 149-62; idem, “Commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries: The City-Port of Izmir and Its Hinterland,” International Journal of Maritime History 10, no. 2 (Dec. 1998): 126-36. 54 Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “British Economic Activities in Izmir in the Second Half of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” New Perspectives on Turkey 5-6 (Fall 1992), 200-5; idem, “Western and Local Entrepreneurs in Izmir in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Son Yüzyıllarda İzmir ve Batı Anadolu Uluslararası Sempozyumu Bildirileri, ed. Tuncer Baykara (Izmir: Akademi, 1994); and idem, “Concurrence commercial et financière entre les pays occidentaux à Izmir,” in Enjeux et Rapports de Force en Turquie et en Méditerranée orientale, ed. Jacques Thobie, Roland Pérez and Salgur Kançal (Istanbul: Institut Français d’études Anatoliennes Georges Dumézil, 1996), 117-27; and idem, “The Economic Activities of Ottoman and Western Communities in Eighteenth-Century Izmir,” Oriento Moderno 18, (1/1999): 11-26. 55 Elena Frangakis-Syrett “The Trade of Cotton and Cloth in Izmir: From the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century to the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East, ed. Çağlar Keyder and Faruk Tabak (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), 97-111. 56 Necmi Ülker, “The Role and Importance of Izmir in The Silk Trade, 17th and 18th Centuries,” in Unesco İpek Yolları Deniz Araştırma Gezisi Konferansları (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1993), 93-111 and Olcay Pullukçuoğlu Yapucu, “XIX. Yüzyılda Batı Anadolu İpekçiliği,” in Halil İnalcık Armağanı, Vol. 2, ed. Taşkın Takış (Ankara: Doğu Batı Yayınları, 2011), 117-35. 57 Gülay Webb Yıldırmak, XVIII. Yüzyılda Osmanlı-İngiliz Tiftik Ticareti (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2011).

  35    

In short, in the 1970s and 1980s, the economic history of Ottoman port-cities became a vast international enterprise, dominated by Wallerstein’s world-systems theory. Without a doubt, world-systems theorists have made a brave attempt of offering a new interpretation of core-periphery relations. From the 1990s on, some of the historians of Ottoman studies have decided to turn away from a top-down history and to confront all-inclusive theories and approaches such as the world-systems theory. They have claimed that in such theories and approaches, in spite of the fresh perspectives they offer, stories of struggle, resistance, and rejection of the people in the periphery are obscured, whereas stories of submission, approval, and admission are manifest. This turn, which has aimed to embrace complex local histories and fill huge gaps in what we know about the everyday life of individuals, marked the beginning of cultural history. Different from social and economic historians, who have favored macro-theories and approaches and used class as an analytical tool, cultural historians have employed community and ethnicity as useful categories to study port-cities. The members of ethno-religious groups in Ottoman port-cities as privileged groups of individuals connected through religious, linguistic, or ethnic networks have loomed large in the works of cultural historians.59 The abandonment of class as an analytic category in favor of community and ethno-religious identity and the use of the term “notables” instead of bourgeoisie have denoted what one historian called “the transition from a class-driven to an identities bound interpretation of history.”60 Izmir has provided a useful laboratory for exploring elements of multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and polyglot society. Researchers have studied the British, French, Italian, Dutch, German, and Greek communities in Izmir not only to understand

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            58

Günver Güneş, “Osmanlı Devleti’nde Meyan Kökü Tarımı ve Ticareti (1840-1912),” Kebikeç 18 (2004): 34361. 59 For a study that uses community as an analytical tool to understand the transformation of Ottoman port-cities, see: Vangelis Kechriotis, “The Greeks of Izmir at the End of the Empire: A Non-Muslim Ottoman Community between Autonomy and Patriotism,” (Leiden: Leiden University, Ph.D. Diss., 2005). 60 Athanasios Gekas, “Class and Cosmopolitanism: The Historiographical Fortunes of Merchants in Eastern Mediterranean Ports,” Mediterranean Historical Review 24, no. 2 (Dec. 2009): 97 and 101.

  36    

relations between these communities, but also to present a picture of the transformations the city underwent in the nineteenth century.61 Cultural historians have increasingly challenged grand theories and structural approaches and brought fresh perspectives to the writing of history of Ottoman port-cities. One of the concepts they have promoted in their writings is cosmopolitanism. Although previous researchers outlined the cosmopolitan character of Ottoman port-cities in the Mediterranean, and equated cosmopolitanism with coexistence, cultural historians have found this simple definition inadequate and attempted to make a distinction between what is cosmopolitanism and what is multiculturalism or coexistence. In recent studies on Ottoman port-cities, researchers have suggested that cosmopolitan can refer to a city where communities live side-by-side but not really together and in peace. They have not adopted, therefore, the term as an urban phenomenon, but used it to denominate a common character of individuals sharing the same urban space.62 The cosmopolitan character of Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and European (Levantine) communities, as well as social and cultural aspects of intraand intercommunal life in Izmir cities has also been the subject of several studies.63                                                                                                                           61

For the British community in Izmir, see: Tom Rees, Merchant Adventurers in the Levant. Two British Families of Privateers, Consuls and Traders 1700-1950 (Stawell: Tablot, 2003); for the French community, see: Serap Yılmaz and Léon Kontente, Présence française à Smyrne du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Montigny-le-Bretonneux: Yvelinédition, 2012); for the Italian community, see: Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis, “Gli italiani a Smirne nei secoli XVIII e XIX,” Altreltalie 6, no. 12 (1994): 39-59 and Mevlüt Çelebi, “19. Yüzyılda İzmir’de İtalyan Cemaati,” Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 22, no. 1 (July 2007): 19-51; for the Dutch community, see: Jan Schmidt, From Anatolia to Indonesia: Opium Trade and the Dutch Community of Izmir, 1820-1949 (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1998); for the German community, see: İlhan Pınar, Osmanlı Dönemi’nde İzmir’de Bir Cemaat: İzmir’de Alman İzleri, 1752-1922 (Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2013). 62 For Alexandria, see: Robert Ilbert, “Alexandrie cosmopolite?,” in Villes ottomanes à la fin de l’Empire, ed. Paul Dumont and François Georgeon (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992), 171-85; for Istanbul, see: Edhem Eldem, “Batılılaşma, Modernleşme ve Kozmopolitizm: 19. Yüzyıl Sonu ve 20. Yüzyıl Başında İstanbul,” in Osman Hamdi Bey ve Dönemi, ed. Zeynep Rona (Istanbul, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1993), 12-26. 63 For the Greek communities, see: Roxane Argyropoulos, “La communauté grecque de Smyrne au temps des lumieres,” Etudes Balkaniques 1 (2002): 110-15 and Feryal Tansuğ, “Communal Relations in Izmir/Smyrna, 1826-1864: As Seen through the Prism of Greek-Turkish Relations,” (Ph.D. Diss. University of Toronto, 2008); for the Armenian communitie, see: Onnik Jamgocyan, “Une famille de financiers arméniens au XVIIIe siècle: les Serpos,” in Les villes dans L’Empire Ottoman: Activités et sociétés, vol. 1, ed. Daniel Panzac (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1991), 365-90 and Richard G. Hovannisian, Armenian Smyrna/Izmir: The Aegean Communities (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2012); for the Jewish communities, see: Jacob Barnai, “The Origins of the Jewish Community in Izmir in the Ottoman Period,” Pe’amim 12, (1982): 47-58; Siren Bora, İzmir Yahudileri Tarihi: 1908-1923 (Istanbul: Gözlem Gazetecilik Basın ve Yayın, 1995); and Henri Nahum, İzmir Yahudileri, 19.-20.

  37    

Furthermore, during the past two decades, some historians have deconstructed the recurring image of Izmir as a place with a romanticized cosmopolitan character and examined cosmopolitanism within the context of intercommunal conflicts, nationalist struggles, and imperial rivalries.64 The concept of cosmopolitanism has guided another group of researchers who have analyzed changes of urban space in Ottoman port-cities in the longue duree from different angles. Researchers in this group, mostly urban and architectural historians, have employed cosmopolitanism as a special phenomenon and emphasized the relation between cosmopolitan citizens and the physical environment that surrounds them. They have viewed Ottoman portcities as cosmopolitan sites “not simply because of their multi-confessional, multi-ethnic, and multilingual populations and dense and variegated cityscapes, but also because they occupied relatively autonomous spaces that mediated between different worlds.”65 The cosmopolitan structure of Izmir has offered a laboratory for the study of urban changes. Sibel Zandi-Sayek studied Izmir’s urban expansion within the context of modernization, which she saw, not as an incentive that came from the pressure imposed by Western powers, but as a process of negotiation between cosmopolitan individuals and the state.66 In a similar vein, Cana Bilsel discussed the transformation of the urban space of Izmir in the second half of the nineteenth century through the context of interethnic and intercommunal relations. Last but not least, a number of researchers have discussed cosmopolitan individuals as local players and the ways

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Yüzyıl (Istanbul: İletişim, 2000); for the Levantines in Izmir, see: Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis, “Coexistence et réseaux de relations à Smyrne aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 67 (December 2003): 111-23; and Oliver Jens Schmitt, “Levantins, européens et jeux d’identité,” in Smyrnelis, Smyrne, la ville oubliée?, 106-120. 64 Hervé Georgelin, La Fin de Smyrne: Du Cosmopolitisme aux Nationalismes (Paris: CNRS, 2005) and Malte Fuhrmann, “Cosmopolitan Imperialists and the Ottoman Port Cities: Conflicting Logics in the Urban Social Fabric,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 67 (2003): 149-63. 65 Biray Kolluoğlu and Meltem Toksöz, “Mapping Out the Eastern Mediterranean: Toward a Cartography of Cities of Commerce,” in Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day, ed., Biray Kolluoğlu and Meltem Toksöz (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 8. 66 Sibel Zandi-Sayek, Ottoman Izmir. The Rise of a Cosmopolitan Port, 1840-1880 (Minneapolis, MN; London: University of Minnessota Press, 2012).

  38    

they took part in discussions on urban government and future projects and pressured the Ottoman government to meet their own demands.67

The “Gateway City”

“Gateway” is not a complex term, but it still needs to be defined and its relationship with the other terms that organize this study should be explained. A common dictionary definition

of

the

term

is

“an entrance or passage that may be closed by a gate”

or

“a structure for enclosing such an opening or entrance,” but this usage has broadened to describe any means of entry or access. The “gateway city” model, on the other hand, was first conceptualized by the Canadian geographer Andrew F. Burghardt in contrast to the concept of the central place, which had long dominated the theoretical framework of urban geography.68 Burghardt researched some cities in North America and Eastern Europe in a frontier context and put forth the concept of the “gateway city” as a place, which is “in command of the connections between the tributary area and the outside world.”69 In terms of gateway cities’                                                                                                                           67

Cânâ Bilsel, “Cultures et fonctionnalités: l’évolution de la morphologie urbaine de la ville d’Izmir aux XIXème et début XXème siècles,” (Ph.D. Diss., Université Paris X, 1996); Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis, “Les Européens et leur implantation dans l’espace urbain de Smyrne (1750-1850),” in Les étrangers dans la ville. Minorités et espace urbain du bas Moyen Age à l’époque moderne, ed. Jacques Bottin and Donatella Calabi (Paris: Editions de la MSH, 1999), 65-75; and idem, “Smyrne au XIXème siècle. Organisation et utilisation de l’espace urbain,” in Actes du IIe Colloque International - Association des Etudes Néohelléniques, (Athens: Association des etudes néohelléniques, 2000), 371-87. Vangelis Kechriotis, “Protecting the City’s Interest: The Greek-Orthodox and the Conflict Between Municipal and Vilayet Authorities in Izmir (Smyrna) in the Second Constitutional Period,” Mediterranean Historical Review 24, no. 2 (Dec. 2009): 207-21. 68 Andrew F. Burghardt, “A Hypothesis About Gateway Cities,” Annals, Association of American Geographers 61, no. 2 (June 1971): 269-85. The central place theory was first formulated by the German geographer Walter Christaller, who tried to explain the evolution of hierarchy of towns. Christaller put forward that settlements simply functioned as “central places” providing services and goods to surrounding tributary area. For the idea of central place, see: Walter Christaller, Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland: Eine ökonomisch-geographische Untersuchung über die Gesetzmässigkeit der Verbreitung und Entwicklung der Siedlungen mit städtischen Funktionen (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1933). For recent discussions of Christaller’s central place theory, see, among others: Brian Joe Lobley Berry, H. Gardiner Barnum, and Allen Pred, Central Place Studies: A Bibliography of Theory and Applications (Philadelphia: Regional Science Research Institute, 1965); Keith Sidney Orrock Beavon, Central Place Theory: A Reinterpretation (London: Longman, 1977); Leslie J. King, Central Place Theory (Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications, 1984); and Peter Sjøholt, “Christaller Revisited: Reconsidering Christaller’s Analysis of Services and Central Places,” Service Industries Journal 21, no. 4 (Oct. 2001):, 198200. 69 Burghardt, 269.

  39    

development, Bughardt argued that such cities “often develop in the contact zones between areas of different intensities or types of production, along or near economic shear lines.” “Entrance into an extended hinterland is” he noted, “of the essence of a gateway,” and claimed that “the entrance tends to be narrow and used by anyone leaving the agricultural hinterland behind.”70 It has been more than four decades since Burghardt hypothesized the gateway city and firstly geographers, and later economists, sociologists, and globalization scholars, have used this term when analyzing the patterns of development of cities at the margin of a producing region.71 Ronald John Johnston used the term “gateway primate cities” in a colonial context to describe the development of port-cities as control centers for colonial powers.72 Peter J. Taylor referred to gateway cities as “necessary regional centers” and distinguished them from other cities because of their “high global network connectivity.”73 Saskia Sassen, forging the connection between globalization and urbanization, identified major gateway cities in the United States and Europe as “global cities.”74 Migration scholars have used the label “immigrant gateway city” to define cities that “are not only settlement points for immigrants

                                                                                                                          70

 

Ibid., 269-70. 71 J. A. Edwards, “The Swansea City-Region: A Case Study of a Gateway System,” Geography 65, no. 2 (Apr. 1980): 81-94; Peter Karl Kresl, “Gateway Cities: A Comparison of North America with the European Community,” Ekistics 58 (1991): 352-6; Matthew P. Drennan, “Gateway Cities: The Metropolitan Sources of U.S. Producer Services Exports,” Urban Studies 29, no. 2 (Apr. 1992): 217-35; James J. Wang, “Hong Kong: An Upgraded Gateway for China Trade,” in Gateways to Globalisation: Asia’s International Trading and Finance Centres, ed. François Gipouloux (Cheltenham; UK: Edward Elgar, 2011), 117-29; Dušan Drbohlav and Ludek Sýkora, “Gateway Cities in the Process of Regional Integration in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Prague,” in Migration, Free Trade and Regional Integration in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Gudrun Biffl (Vienna: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1997), 181-213; and Peter Mayerhofer and Yvonne WolfmayrSchnitzer, “Gateway Cities in the Process of Regional Integration in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Vienna,” in Migration, Free Trade and Regional Integration, 215-37; Åke E. Andersson and David Emanuel Andersson, Gateways to the Global Economy (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2000); and John Rennie Short et al., “From World Cities to Gateway Cities: Extending the Boundaries of Globalization Theory,” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 4, no. 3 (2000): 317-40. 72 Ronald John Johnston, City and Society: An Outline for Urban Geography (London, 1984). 73 Peter J. Taylor, World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis (London: Routledge, 2004), 91-92. 74 Saskia Sassen, The Mobility of Capital and Labor: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1988).

  40    

but also critical entry points that draw from a wide range of sending countries, facilitate cultural exchange, and are nodes for the collection and dispersion of goods.”75 Environmental historians have also recently employed the gateway city model to study transformations in areas between different economic and environmental entities. The most well-known is the American environmental historian William Cronon, who argued in his Nature’s Metropolis that Chicago served as the “gateway city” -the place in betweenconnecting the America’s industrial east and agricultural west. Cronon masterfully used Burghardt’s gateway city model to explore the development of Chicago as a metropolis linking the “Great West” and as a conduit not just for commodities flowing from the hinterland to eastern markets, but for manufactured goods to flow from the city out towards growing rural markets. Following the path broken by Cronon, American environmental historians employ the “gateway city” model to look at the recent histories of American cities. For example, Matthew W. Klingle studied Seattle’s gateway status for Alaska and the Yukon after the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1897.76 Likewise, Frances F. Dunwell defined the Hudson as “the gateway to America for millions of immigrants who aspired for a new life.”77 In many respects, the gateway city model is a viable alternative to view Izmir’s relationship with the Western Anatolian countryside, as well as with the outside world, too. In this study, therefore, I also employ Burghardt’s gateway city model to look at the history of Izmir in the late-Ottoman period from the perspective of environmental history. I use the term gateway in its economic meaning to explain trade flows through cities and between regions. I                                                                                                                           75

Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short, eds. Migrants to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 6. See also: Feng Hou and Larry S. Bourne, Population Movement Into and Out of Canada’s Immigrant Gateway Cities: A Comparative Analysis of Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2004) and idem, “The Migration-Immigration Link in Canada’s Gateway Cities: A Comparative Study of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver,” Environment and Planning 38, no. 8 (Spring 2004): 1505-25. 76 Matthew W. Klingle, Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (New Haven, MA: Yale University Press, 2007). 77 Frances F. Dunwell, “Foreword,” in History of the Hudson River Human Uses that Changed the Ecology, Ecology that Changed Human Uses, ed. Robert E. Henshaw (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), ix.

  41    

put the term gateway in front of Izmir to indicate that it occupied a crucial position between the empire and the global markets, and that the majority of goods imported and exported by mainland territories passed through this port in the period under consideration. I refer to Izmir as the “gateway city” of Western Anatolia, because it became the main point of connection between a region with a diversity of natural resources with the outside world. It represented the center of an hourglass that connected valleys and plains of Western Anatolia to European ports such as Marseille, London, Liverpool, and Amsterdam. To return to Burghardt’s argument, by definition, gateway cities are located at the edge of its tributary areas. They often develop between two or more areas having different types of production, economies, cultures, and urban lives. Different than most inland towns, or socalled central cities, which usually have local trade connections, gateway cities connect distinct zones and regions. They function as collectors of goods and products from their surrounding areas and as distribution centers for manufactured goods that were produced outside of its limits. Moreover, long-distance trade connections they establish allow gateway cities to channel the flow of commodities of different types and values coming from faraway places. From the mid-nineteenth century on, because of its advantageous location at the interface between land and maritime networks, Izmir was on its way to becoming the predominant gateway city in the Ottoman Empire, serving as both the entrance to and the exit from Western Anatolia and linking the empire with the rest of the world. In this period, it dominated the empire’s trade with Europe through its position at the tip of the Anatolian peninsula. As the gateway to the rich agricultural lands of Western Anatolia, it was the export center for wheat from Uşak, cotton from Akhisar, figs from Nazilli, and raisins from Alaşehir. Ships left Izmir filled with agricultural products and returned European manufactures bound for Western Anatolia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire.

  42    

Burghardt also suggested that “since entrance into an extended hinterland is of the essence of a gateway, such a city will tend to be located on a site of considerable transportational significance, i.e., either at a bulk-breaking point or at a node of transport lines.”78 Indeed, Izmir developed as an economic center and became the gateway city due to its infrastructural link with the Western Anatolian railroad network that connected it to the river valleys to the interior. In the process of becoming the gateway city, railroads provided access to a huge inland territory, and helped Izmir grow larger and richer than the rival portcities on the Eastern Mediterranean. As we will see in the following chapters, Turkey’s first railroads, the Izmir-Aydın and the Izmir-Turgutlu (Kasaba) lines, were both completed in 1866, connecting the fertile Anatolian hinterland with Izmir, and hence with the rest of the Mediterranean.79 In the second half of the nineteenth century, Izmir took on a new role in Western Anatolia when it transformed from a transit city to a gateway city. It forged a stronger connection with its surrounding areas than any other city on the Eastern Mediterranean and acted as a link between regions as well as empires. While as a transit city its role was limited to forwardıng the merchandise coming from the East to the West, its key function as a gateway city was to incorporate its fertile hinterlands into the expanding market economy. In other words, Izmir became a gateway city when it realized success in its efforts to integrate its hinterlands into the market economy. The shift from transit to gateway, therefore, symbolized both the success of the city, and that of the country around it. However, it is important to underline the fact that the metamorphosis from a transit city to a gateway city was gradual, and to note that the distinction between the two was not as sharp as it might appear. It was a continuation of a linear process rather than a change of direction. However, it is important to                                                                                                                           78

Burghardt, 270. Charles Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 56.

79

  43    

underline the fact that the metamorphosis from a transit city to a gateway city was gradual, and note that the distinction between the two was not as sharp as it might appear. It was a continuation of a linear process rather than a change of direction. It is also worthwhile to mention that the description “gateway city” offers not only a physical or a geographical space, but also a metaphor to describe a shared social space. This unique social space may have striking qualities, such as porosity, transience, openness, and flux, and foster encounter, exchange, and interconnectedness. In this context, Izmir was the gateway city for thousands of immigrants, who aspired to a new life. Western observers had confirmed the gateway function of Izmir in this meaning a long time before scholars put forth the gateway city as a model. Henry Duff Trail wrote in 1890: “To me it has an attraction of its own, as being, more than any other city in the Levant, a sort of gateway to the East, an entrance to the Morning Land, to the region of mosques and turbans, and caravans and camels, and harems. It is as the meeting-ground of Asia and Europe that Smyrna dwells chiefly in my memory.”80 In 1907, Ernest L. Harris, the American consul in Smyrna, in his report on the steamship service in the Ottoman Empire, underlined “the importance of putting forth every effort to secure trade with a Levantine port like Smyrna, which is the commercial gateway to Asia Minor.”81

                                                                                                                          80

Henry Duff Traill, The Picturesque Mediterranean, Vol. 1 (Cassell, 1890), 45. “Asiatic Turkey. Competition Leads to Improvements,” Monthly Consular and Trade Reports 328 (Washington D.C: Government Printing Office, Jan. 1908), 136.

81

  44    

CHAPTER II

DISTINCT DICHOTOMY: IZMIR AND WESTERN ANATOLIA IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY

From the early seventeenth century, Izmir developed into a major transit port largely due to its intermediary position between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. Lucrative longdistance trade was the driving force in the evolution of Izmir from an Anatolian backwater to a thriving Mediterranean port-city with a predominantly maritime economy. It forwarded good-quality silk from Persia and mohair yarn from Ankara, as well as goods, raw materials, and foodstuffs that were sold at high prices to the better-off in London, Paris, or Amsterdam. In other words, the city owed its early commercial success to its privileged location at the intersection of major transport networks that connected the West and the East. Its position as the point of transfer for high-valued commodities coming from afar such as silk, mohair yarn, cotton, opium, and spices enabled Izmir to grow and prosper rapidly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For a long time, however, this growth and prosperity neither influenced urban dwellers’ lives quite as much as Europeans imagined, nor shaped their attitudes to nature and to each other. Except from a small group of merchants and intermediaries, Smyrniotes were distant, not only culturally and physically, but also economically and ecologically from their surrounding environment well into the second half of the nineteenth century. This chapter focuses on the wide disparity in overall social and economic conditions, but also on drawbacks and inconveniences that hindered the city’s promising economic prospects and impeded the commercial development of the city. It speaks to a series of natural

45    

and human-made catasthrophes, such as earthquakes, fires, and epidemic, problems and obstacles, challenges and difficulties, and how the urban and rural residents coped with them.

Geographical and Historical Layout of Ottoman Izmir

Izmir, considered as one of the oldest cities in the Mediterranean world, is more ancient than Istanbul, Alexandria, and Beirut. The city acquired a maritime character with the Ionian invasion in the ninth century B.C., when the city’s contact with the Greek world increased and the Smyrneans traded with other city-states across the Aegean Sea. After the destruction of the city in the late seventh century B.C., cultural and economic life in Izmir revived with the arrival of Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. He encouraged its residents to settle on the slopes of Kadifekale (Pagos), where the new city was established. Under the Pax Romana, trade flourished in the region and the city became a significant port, while other major ports of ancient times such as Ephesus, Miletus, and Priene petered out as a result of the silt and soil brought by the Küçük Menderes (Cayster) and Büyük Menderes (Meander) rivers. The arrival of Christanity in the region further increased the importance of Izmir. When the Roman Empire divided into two in the fourth century, Izmir belonged to the eastern part, which came to be known as the Byzantine Empire, until its transfer to the Genoese by the Treaty of Nif in 1261. The first encounter of Izmir with the Turks occurred in the late eleventh century, when Seljuk Turkish warriors led by Çaka Bey briefly controlled the city. The Turks regained the city about two hundred years later, under the banner of the Aydınoğulları, a maritime dynasty that ruled during the fourteenth century.82 For much of the                                                                                                                           82

For the Aydınoğulları dynasty, see: Himmet Akın, Aydınoğulları Tarihi Hakkında Bir Araştırma (Istanbul: Pulhan Matbaası, 1946); Paul Lemerle, L’émirat d’Aydın, Byzance et l’Occident: Recherches sur la “Geste

46    

fourteenth century, Izmir was caught in a power struggle between the Turks and the Genoese. The Turks controlled the upper part of Izmir and the fortress of Kadifekale, as well as the land routes to the city, while the Genoese held the inner harbor and harbor fortress, hence the sea routes to the city. The dual situation in the city continued until 1402, when Tamerlane won a decisive victory over Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara. Tamerlane united Izmir and returned it to the Aydınoğulları. However, in 1426, Izmir came under the control of the Ottomans. Ottoman Izmir was situated just about at the center of the western extremity of the Anatolian peninsula. Its sheltered position at the head of a thirty-three-mile-long bay historically gave the city easy access to the Mediterranean, while protecting it from invaders and intruders. High mountains enveloped the city: Mount Yamanlar (Tantalus) and Mount Spil (Sipylus) to the north, the Karabelen Mountains to the south, and Mount Nif to the east. With elevations over 3,000 feet, these mountains protected the city from the northerly and southerly winds by mountain ranges on its north and south. The city was, however, exposed to westerly winds, which brought in swells and waves. High westerly winds endangered the safety of ships and affected the efficiency of cargo handling operations in the harbor for a long time. The problem was finally solved by the construction of a new quay in 1867-75.83 The southern shore of the Bay of Izmir did not change much during the five centuries of Ottoman rule, while the northern shore was somewhat different in previous centuries than in the last decades. Until the diversion of its riverbed further north in 1886, the Gediz (Hermus) River flowed into the bay, filling it with alluvial deposits. In Ottoman times, the Yeşildere (Meles) Creek demarcated the border between the city and the countryside. The                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             d’Umur Pacha” (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957); and Halil İnalcık, “The Rise of the Turcoman Maritime Principalities in Anatolia, Byzantium, and the Crusades,” in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Turkish Studies Department, 1993), 309-41. 83 Karl von Scherzer, Smyrna: Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die geographischen, wirtschaftlichen und intellektuellen Verhältnisse von Vorder-Kleinasien (Vienna: Alfred Holder, 1873), 5. For a long description of the construction of a new quay, see: Chapter V.

47    

famous Caravan Bridge, connecting the city to the rest of Anatolia, was situated on this river. Built around 850 B.C., it qualified as one of the oldest functioning bridges in the world. Today, there is no evidence left of the original bridge, whereas the Yeşildere Creek, still flows thinly through the present-day metropolitan center of Izmir. Map 1: Ottoman Izmir and Its Hinterland in the Nineteenth Century

Source: Firmin Rougon, Smyrne: Situation Commerciale et Économique (Paris: Berger Levrault, 1892)

48    

Izmir had one of the most temperate climates in Anatolia. Summers were long, dry, and hot, day temperatures often reaching to 100°F. In some years, the whole summer passed without a single raindrop. During the hot summer months, the imbat, the soft breeze blowing in from the Aegean Sea, cooled the city a few degrees. Winters, on the other hand, were short, mild, and wet in Izmir. Except for the caps of mountains that envelop the city, it was unusual for snow to fall in the city center. Likewise, the temperatures rarely dropped below freezing in winter. The paucity of sources for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries makes it difficult for us to make a judgment about the commercial potential of Izmir at that time. However, it can be argued that in the first two centuries of Ottoman rule, Izmir was not particularly significant to the imperial capital and was seen as no more important than other settlements on the Aegean coast such as Edremit, Foça, Menemen, Selçuk, and Kuşadası. The government “neither encouraged commerce in Izmir nor welcomed the bullion that such an entrepot might bring,” and as a result, in terms of commercial activity, it lagged behind other major trading centers.84 For much of the sixteeenth century, Izmir’s role did not change significantly and it continued to function as a “fruit basket” for the imperial capital. As part of the “provisionism”85 policy of the empire, the city forwarded a wide array of commodities, but mostly fruits, vegetables, and olives to Istanbul, though generally not more than what was required. Provisionism, however, did not mean the direct governmental control of agriculture and manufacturing. The underlying principle of Ottoman provisionism was to obtain and distribute key resources to the capital and other major cities. The government intervened in the production and

                                                                                                                          84

Daniel Goffman, “Izmir: From Village to Colonial City,” 86. Coined by Mehmet Genç, “provisionism” refers to Ottoman government’s policy to “keep the supply of goods and services to the internal market at an optimum level.” For provisioning in Western Anatolia, see: Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 33-45.

85

49    

processing of agricultural and industrial goods only in “wars, crop failures, and other difficulties in provisioning the city and monetary instabilities.”86 The transformation of Izmir from a small coastal town shipping the produce of its region to the imperial capital into a thriving and cosmopolitan port forwarding the foodstuffs, textiles, and valuables of Anatolia, Iran, and Syria to Western Europe started in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. This transformation was the result of political and economic crisis in the Ottoman Empire as much as structural changes in the world economy. Furthermore, the Ottoman government, by loosening its control over the Western Anatolian trade, provided a basis for the rise of Izmir. When the government lifted its ban on the export of certain products such as cotton, mohair yarn, and fruits, foreign merchants, attracted by the possibility of conducting trade through the empire, came from different parts of Europe and settled in the city. Between 1580 and 1650, the city’s population not only increased twentyfold, reaching from 2,000 to 30,000-40,000, but also became increasingly diversified. While in the late sixteenth century more than eighty per cent of its inhabitants were Turks, by the mid-seventeeth century, the city had merchant communities of different ethnicities and religions. Greek Orthodox people came from the Aegean islands, as well as from surrounding towns and villages. Jews moved here from Western Anatolia, but also from Salonica and Istanbul. The Armenian community in Izmir, on the other hand, was small but influential; by creating a silk market in Izmir and exploiting their connections with the international Armenian trade networks, they played a critical role in the diversion of silk from Aleppo and Bursa to the city in the course of the century. Finally, Venetian, Dutch, English, and French

                                                                                                                          86

Şevket Pamuk, “Ottoman Interventionism in Economic and Monetary Affairs,” Revue d’histoire maghrebine 25 (1998): 364.

50    

merchants migrated there from afar and established trading connections with merchants in Europe.87 In addition to the migrants, who were attracted by the growing commercial prospects of Izmir in the seventeenth century and left their places of origin to make a living from international trade, the increased security of the desert routes between Iran and Syria enabled Izmir to rise as the terminus of the Silk Road. For the majority of the seventeenth century, silk coming from the East was the most important export item of Izmir. In the eighteenth century, mohair yarn from Ankara, wool from the inner parts of Anatolia, as well as other items, such as raw cotton, opium, grains, fruits and vegetables, and olive oil from the nearby valleys, were added to it. As a result, Izmir became the marketplace of the Eastern Mediterranean, where English, French, Dutch, and Venetian merchants competed for market share. From the 1740s on, Izmir’s share in the exports of the Ottoman Empire increased steadily and the city surpassed all other ports in the empire. In the second half of the eighteenth century, it had a share of one-third of total Ottoman exports.88 Elena Frangakis has suggested that three factors were influential in the commercial growth of Izmir in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Firstly, as part of the government’s policy to centralize trade in Izmir, European merchants were encouraged to settle there. After the erection of Sancak Fortress on the narrowest point of the Bay of Izmir in 1658-59, the entrance to the harbor became easier to monitor. The government further promoted trade in Izmir by constructing a large han (inn), a bedesten (covered market), and a customs house and by granting tax-exemptions to European merchants. Secondly, the diversion of the international trade route away from Aleppo because of ongoing wars between                                                                                                                           87

Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 126-27. For the distribution of Iranian raw silk, see also: Suraiya Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change, 1590-1699,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Vol. 2, ed., Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 502-7. 88 Frangakis, 149.

51    

the Ottoman and Safavid Empires brought about a shift in the East-West trade. In this process, Izmir’s thriving merchant communities’ efforts to consolidate trade networks played a significant role and the city became the western terminus for the Silk Road by the middle of the seventeenth century. The export of raw silk through the port of Izmir paved the way for an impressive growth of intercontinental trade. Whereas silk was the most important merchandize in the first two decades of the eighteenth century, with the growth of textile manufacturing mainly in Southern France, but also Switzerland and Germany, cotton produced in the hinterland of Izmir came to play a significant role in the second half of the eighteenth century.89 Finally, the city monopolized the trade of mohair yarn destined for Europe. In the period between 1730 and 1760, the share of Izmir in the empire’s mohair yarn exports increased three times from 12.6 per cent to 36.9.90 As the most important export item, mohair yarn contributed significantly to the commercial success of the city.91 A little later, with the decline of silk trade and the subsequent rise of cotton production, European merchants based in Izmir expanded their trade activities towards the city’s hinterland, enabling the city to look to agricultural products coming from the surrounding towns and villages for its growth and prosperity.92 The geographic orientation of trade, however, was a gradual and complex process and did not generate any significant developments in the region. The socio-economic and demographic changes that started taking place in Western Anatolia in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries did not change Izmir’s role as a transit port dramatically, but formed the basis for changes in the structure, content, and volume of                                                                                                                           89

Cotton remained as one of the most important export items of Izmir until the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars that troubled the commercial networks and infrastructure in France. Elena Frangakis-Syrett “The Trade of Cotton and Cloth in Izmir: From the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century to the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East, ed. Çağlar Keyder and Faruk Tabak (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), 97-111. Great Britain had been importing cotton from the United States for a long time. It would turn to the Ottoman Empire and other countries with the disruptions of the Atlantic trade during the American Civil War in the 1860s. 90 Frangakis-Syrett, The Commerce of Smyrna, 216-17. See also: Yıldırmak. 91 Frangakis, 150-51. 92 Frangakis-Syrett, “The Trade of Cotton and Cloth in Izmir,” 98-101.

52    

trade that would transform Izmir into the gateway city of Western Anatolia in the nineteenth century. Significant irreversible economic and ecological changes would occur in the nineteenth century with the changing nature of trade, as well as more efficient use of labor, capital, and technology. In this century, as we will see in the following chapters, the city’s relation to its surrounding would be enhanced and it would command the surpluses of the local hinterland first, and then the vast regions behind it.

The City: Between Life and Death

The majority of European visitors who traveled to or stayed in Izmir in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries praised the city for its beauty and perfection. Many European observers who visited the city named and evaluated the Oriental beauty of Izmir through their Western frames of reference, using colorful descriptions, remarks, and titles expressing admiration. They wrote in laudatory tones about what they saw as the natural advantages and geographical assets of the city and gave titles to it such as “Le Petit Paris du Levant,”93 or “the chief emporium of the Levant.”94 They admired its unique geographical location, as well as the richness of its soil and the mildness of its climate. For example, the French natural scientist Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini had high praise for Izmir in 1801: “There is not in the Levant any situation better calculated to be the centre of a flourishing trade than that of Smyrna.”95 An article appearing in The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal in 1828 praised Izmir’s port: “The convenient anchorage of its spacious bay, and the facility of its                                                                                                                           93

Charles MacFarlane, Constantinople in 1828, A Residence of Sixteen Months in the Turkish Capital and Provinces (London: Saunders and Otley, 1829), 41. 94 William Hughes, A Manual of European Geography (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1856), 341. 95 Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini, Travels in Greece and Turkey, Vol. II (London: T.N. Longman & O. Rees, 1801), 327-28.

53    

communications with the remotest part of the interior have naturally pointed out this city as the general mart of home productions, of European manufactures, and of colonial produce.”96 In 1834, An Encyclopedia of Geography proclaimed: “The situation is such that Smyrna could scarcely fail to be a flourishing place. It has a fine bay, with good anchorage, a secure and capacious harbor, and behind, a plain watered by the Meles, which produces abundantly fruits and vegetables.”97 In short, long before the arrival of steam ships and railways, European visitors to Izmir had concluded that nature had endowed Western Anatolia with favorable climatic conditions, abundant flora and fauna, as well as ample natural resources, and had designated Izmir to become a “Mediterranean metropolis.” Without dispute, Izmir was a magnificent natural harbor with an advantageous location and significant geographical assets. Izmir’s situation is of outstanding significance in explaining its emergence as a metropolis. The water and land that surround it, as well as the physiographic and topographic factors, have certainly facilitated its growth in the early modern period. In addition to these, its temperate climate and rich and fertile soil have also been complementary assets that have promoted the city’s growth. In spite of this growth, however, Izmir was not successful in integrating the economic potentials of the ecologically diverse Western Anatolian countryside to a wider world until the second half of the nineteenth century. Prior to the 1850s, Izmir, as the leading port of the Ottoman Empire, although connected to every corner of Mediterranean through maritime trade routes, was not intimately linked to its immediate hinterland. Nature provided to Izmir certain advantages of urban life over other cities in the Eastern Mediterranean, such as regular provisioning from the land and the sea and relative security from pirates, bandits, and other kidnappers; however, it also impacted humans in negative ways and inhibited Izmir’s economic and urban development.                                                                                                                           96

“Kiatib-Ogloo, and the Smyrna Residents,” The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal 22, no. 85 (Jan. 1828): 557. 97 Hugh Murray, An Encyclopedia of Geography (London: Longman, 1834), 904.

54    

Some of these adversities were first nature issues occasioned by nature itself; others were human-created second nature issues.98 The inhabitants of Izmir had to cope with a series of life-threatening problems such as earthquakes, fires, and recurring diseases. Adding to them other kinds of hazards and risks, as well as urban-specific problems, such as substandard housing, crime and violence, pollution, unsafe water, and poor sanitary conditions, Izmir was a city where the urbanites struggled for life -and lost at times. In the early modern era, the city grew, trade flourished, population increased, but in the meantime quite a number of people died from disasters and diseases. Yet, death was not seen an absolute end of life, but a passage or transformation by the mercy of God into a new eternal existence. Smyrniotes accepted the phenomenon of death as just as much a part of life as life itself.99 Proverbs such as “ölenle ölünmez” (if he dies, he dies) have been used since then as a means of conveying the inevitable truth about death.

Demography

Any study of the state of demography in Izmir and its surroundings in the nineteenth century must confront two challenges: (1) lack of official census data and (2) controversy over unofficial figures. No one really knows the exact population of Western Anatolia prior to the mid-nineteenth century, since the unofficial figures are highly unreliable. The first census in the Ottoman Empire was taken in 1831 to determine the taxable male population rather than finding out the number of individuals. The conduct of the survey was based on the “old method” that was “probably a classification that did not divide the population into age groups                                                                                                                           98

The notions of “first” and “second” nature have been discussed in Chapter 3. In the absence of official figures relating to death and mortality, questions such as “what were the mortality and morbidity rates,” “what was the leading cause of death,” “what was the average life expectancy among different social classes,” “what were the economic effects of death and disease,” and many others will remain unanswered.

99

55    

but merely mentioned their suitability for military service or tax payment.”100 Estimates made by Western observers, on the other hand, are inconsistent and may include the observer’s assumptions and biases. However, despite the serious limitations of the primary sources, the reality that the city continued to grow and prospered in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and ninenteenth centuries cannot be overlooked. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Izmir was a crowded and significantly diverse port city. In the Ottoman Empire, only a few distant cities surpassed Izmir in size. Istanbul could be reached by land or sea in no less than a week, whereas Aleppo and Damascus were at least a month’s caravan journey away. In the absence of official data regarding the population of Izmir in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, historians have relied on the population figures given by European travelers. Even though European travelers did not do any systematic survey and their figures were based on their subjective estimates, they still record the tremendous increase in population from the second half of the eighteenth century on. According to the famous French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, the city had 27,000 inhabitants in 1702 and of them 15,000 were Muslims.101 In 1725, Cornelis de Bruyn, a Dutch painter and traveler, reported that the city had 80,000 inhabitants.102 Six years later, Jean Baptiste Tollot estimated Izmir’s population at 76,000 inhabitants.103 Richard Pococke, an English prelate and anthropologist, counted in 1745 nearly 100,000 people in Izmir and after this date no traveler claimed that the city had less then 100,000 inhabitants.104 In 1774, the German traveler and diplomat Johann Hermann von Riedesell reported that the city had 120,000 inhabitants.105 Although there is a degree of inconsistency in European observers’                                                                                                                           100

Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 19. 101 Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant, Vol. II (Paris: L’imprimerie Royal, 1717), 495. 102 Cornelis de Bruyn, Voyage au Levant, Vol. I (Paris: La Haye, P. Gosse & J. Neaulme, 1725), 83. 103 Jean Baptiste Tollot, Nouveau Voyage fait au Levant dès années 1731 & 1732 (Paris: Cailleau, 1742), 266. 104 Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries, Vol. II, Part II (London: Bowyer, 1745), 37. 105 Johann Hermann von Riedesell, Bemerkungen auf einer Reise nach der Levante (Leipzig: Fritsch, 1774), 25.

56    

recording of populations, we may presume that the population of Izmir increased at an unprecedented rate throughout the eighteenth century and passed the one hundred thousand mark in the closing decades of the century. In addition to natural increase, waves of migration from the countryside, from other cities within the empire, and from around the Mediterranean brought people with diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural identities into the city. The population continued to increase constantly through the nineteenth century. Robert Semple, who visited the city in 1807, wrote that the city is “said to contain 150,000 inhabitants.”106 John Cam Hobhouse, another Englishman, confirmed this number in 1810.107 The Scottish traveler William Rae Wilson, who visited Izmir in 1819, claimed that the city held 100,000 persons.108 This sharp decline in population after 1810 was probably due to a devastating plague epidemic that started in 1812 and lasted until 1819. According to Donald Sandison, the British consul in Bursa, the epidemics in 1812 and 1814 swept off 30,000 to 40,000 people, which equaled about one third of the city’s total population.109 The number is much higher in the accounts of European travelers. The French traveler Joseph M. Tancoigne calculated that the epidemic killed more than 45,000 people in the summer of 1812.110 The English missionary and traveler William Jowett wrote that the epidemic in 1814 took the lives of 30,000 Smyrniotes.111 Even though we do not know the exact figures, the morbidity and mortality of the 1812 and 1814 epidemics were substantial.112 However, the population picked up again rapidly in the 1820s and 30s, regaining the level of the opening decade of the                                                                                                                           106

Robert Semple, Observations on A Journey through Spain and Italy to Naples; and thence to Smyrna and Constantinople, Vol. II (London: C. and R. Baldwin, 1807), 198. 107 John Cam Hobhouse, A Journey through Albania, and Other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia to Constantinople during the Years 1809 and 1810, Vol. II (London: Cawthorn, 1813), 616. 108 William Rae Wilson, Travels in the Holy Land, Egypt, etc., Vol. II (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847), 281. 109 “Sandison to the Earl of Aberdeen,” Jan. 12, 1842, AP, Vol. 54 (1843), 354-56. 110 Joseph M. Tancoigne, Voyage à Smyrne, Vol. I (Paris: Nepveu, 1817), 35. 111 William Jowett, Christian Researches in the Mediterranean from 1815 to 1820 (London: R. Watts, 1824), 57. 112 Even though European observers claimed that Muslims’ deaths were higher in the case of plague epidemic, such claims were founded on observers’ personal impressions and lack a firm statistical base.

57    

century.113 The last plague epidemic in Izmir was reported in 1836-37, which, according to the calculations of a French doctor, carried off 18,000 people.114 In short, from the 1750s to the 1830s, the population of Izmir vacillated between 80,000 and 150,000 people. At times of epidemic diseases and natural disasters, there were sudden decrease in the number of inhabitants, but each time the population started growing again.

Earthquakes and Fires

Due to the geological make-up of the Aegean basin, and a fault line running near the city, Izmir has been repeatedly subjected to devastating earthquakes. The city suffered more from disastrous earthquakes than any other city in the Eastern Mediterranean.115 Catasthropic earthquakes always struck Izmir at a time when the city was rapidly growing in commerce. Fires that broke out within a short time after the earthquakes further damaged buildings and killed people. Despite their alarming frequency, the urban residents dusted themselves   off after each catastrophe. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, Izmir was an extremely fireprone city. Disastrous fires occurred with frequency and each fire caused heavy loss of life and considerable damage to property, as well as the destruction of records and disruption to trade. Earthquakes and strong wind currents that were common to the region triggered fires in the city. Some fires, on the other hand, were anthropogenic in their nature. There were several causes of residential fires such as cooking in open pots, improper use of heating equipment, or                                                                                                                           113

According to William Knight, the city had a population of 140,000 people in 1838; Oriental Outlines, or a Rambler’s Collections of a Tour in Turkey, Greece & Tuscany in 1838 (London: Sampson Low, 1839), 229. 114 Arsène F. Bulard, De la peste orientale: d’après les matériaux, recueillis à Alexandrie, au Caire, à Smyrne et à Constantinople, pendant les années 1833-1838 (Paris: Béchet Jeune et Labé, 1839), 57-58. 115 For a list of earthquakes in Izmir between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Nicholas N. Ambraseys and Caroline Finkel, The Seismicity of Turkey and Adjacent Areas: A Historical Review, 1500-1800 (Istanbul: Eren, 1995).

58    

smoking. However, urban fires were primarily occasioned by urban residents’ preference for wood as construction material because it was easy to find, transport, and work with as both framing and finishing material.116 Furthermore, in comparison to structures built of other construction materials such as mud brick and mortar, wood buildings were resistant to earthquakes. For all the reasons above, wood prevailed other construction materials in cities and urban residents continued to build their homes and shops of wood well into the twentieth century.117 Notwithstanding its advantages, wooden buildings could easily catch fire. Wooden cities of the early modern period “burned fiercely and with regularity either through accident or from intent.”118 In Izmir all houses except the residences, warehouses, and shops of some affluent European merchants were built of wood. Besides its affordable price, wood was easy to transport on the back of a camel or a horse; and therefore, people preferred it as the construction material for their houses.119 Especially in areas where migrant populations lived, the use of flammable materials in shanty houses on small lots turned them into combustible targets. The density and proximity of buildings in the city was another important factor in the precipitation of fire. Narrow streets allowed flames to spread rapidly. Until the urban reforms of the Tanzimat Era, there was no regulation concerning housing, such as the minimum width of existing streets and construction of new buildings. The social and economic conditions under which urban residents lived, as well as their attitudes and beliefs, also played a significant role in urban conflagrations. For example, the consumption of tobacco, as in other Ottoman cities, posed a great risk of fire in Izmir, yet despite this risk, people gathered to                                                                                                                           116

Daniel M. Winterbottom, Wood in the Landscape: A Practical Guide to Specification and Design (New York: John Wiley, 2000), 5. 117 Greg Bankoff, Uwe Lü bken, and Jordan Sand, “Introduction,” in Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World, ed. Greg Bankoff, Uwe Lü bken, and Jordan Sand (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), 4. 118 Ibid., 10. 119 Xavier Marmier, Impressions et souvenirs d’un voyageur chrétien (Tours: Alfred Mame et fils, 1873), 147.

59    

smoke tobacco in flimsy coffehouses and taverns that were built of imflammable and poor quality material.120 The 1688 earthquake, because of the physical damage it caused, was probably the worst of all earthquakes in the history of Izmir. It hit the city on July 10, 1688 and started a conflagration in the European district. The fire first burned the consulates, warehouses, and shops of the Europeans to the ground and then spread rapidly through the city, destroying three fourths of it and leaving 15,000-16,000 dead bodies behind. Commercial life in the city was paralyzed, and some of the European merchants in the city suggested moving out of the city and forming trade colonies in the nearby towns such as Chios, Foça, and Manisa.121 The scale of the damage caused by the 1688 earthquake and subsequent fire was so tremendous that memories of it passed from generation to generation and the inhabitants of Izmir remembered it for many years. On April 4, 1739, another damaging earthquake with an epicenter offshore hit the city. The earthquake occured in the night and many people were killed in their beds. Richard Pococke, who passed through the city later in the year, reported that all houses in the city had been damaged and the urban residents were so terrified of it that “they slept in huts in their gardens and yards almost all the summer.”122 According to French consular reports, in the 1739 earthquake, the damage was concentrated in the European quarter on the shore. The French and Venetian consulates, the parish church, the Jesuit and Capuchin churches were among the buildings that collapsed.123

                                                                                                                          120

Daniel Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 117. Constantinos Iconomos and Bonaventure F. Slaars, Etude sur Smyrne (Izmir: B. Taitikan, 1868), 128-31; Ülker, XVII. ve XVIII. Yüzyıllarda İzmir Şehri Tarihi, 27-28; and Nicholas N. Ambraseys, Earthquakes in the Mediterranean and Middle East: A Multidisciplinary Study of Seismicity up to 1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 522-23. 122 Pococke, 38. 123 ANF, AE Bi/1049 Smyrne. 121

60    

Over the course of the eighteenth century, frequent earthquakes continued to shake Izmir and frighten its inhabitants. Even though people built wooden houses to minimize danger of damage from earthquakes, the number of casualties from earthquakes was usually high due to the fires that followed earthquakes and wiped out densely populated neighborhoods. There were earthquakes reported in the city in 1743, 1745, 1754, 1763, 1765, 1766, and 1771.124 In the summer of 1778, three earthquakes caused widespread destruction in the city. On June 16, an earthquake hit the city, but many of the buildings escaped damage. On July 3, a powerful earthquake hit the city and shook down many houses, as well as three public baths, three minarets, and four mosques. Most Europeans took refuge on ships in the Bay of Izmir, whereas the local inhabitants left their houses and moved to the outskirts of the city.125 On July 5, an earthquake equally as strong as those that occured two days before hit the city and triggered a conflagration. Flames spread through the streets of Izmir and burned down half of the city in thirty-six hours. The Derviş Han, the Küçük Vezir Han, and the Büyük Vezir Han, as well as twenty other hans in the center of Izmir were in ashes. The blazes advanced to the European quarter where the consulates of France, Britain, Naples, Venice, Ragusa, as well as residences of upper-class Europeans and Greeks were destroyed. The residents who were able to escape during the earthquake and fire left the city and camped in the surrounding areas. The damage caused by the fire and the ensuing looting was more severe than the earthquakes.126 Another great conflagration burned the city to the ground in 1742. The fire started in the Jewish quarter in the night of July 19 and spread into the European quarter. It lasted more than twenty-four hours and wiped out two-thirds of the city. In addition to eight public baths,                                                                                                                           124

Ambraseys. ANF, AE Bi/1065 Smyrne. See also Iconomos and Slaars, 132-33; and Ambraseys, 606-7. 126 Annual Register 1778, 193-94; Gazette de France 1778, 9/14; ANF, AE Bi/1064 Smyrne; FO SP/97/54.187; FO SP/97/54.195. See also Iconomos and Slaars, 132-33; and Ambrasseys, 607. 125

61    

forty-two hans, forty-five mosques, and 1,500 shops, the Jewish quarter was completely burned down.127 Later in the century, fires broke out in 1752, 1760, 1761, and 1763. The eighteenth century closed with two large urban conflagrations. The 1796 fire broke out for an unknown reason and destroyed a large part of the Turkish quarter. Two mosques, two hamams (public baths), many hans, and 4,000 buildings were in ashes in a few hours.128 A year later, in April 1797, an arson-ignited fire burned down the city. The incident arose out of an argument between a Venetian seaman and a janissary soldier. The Venetian seaman wanted to watch the show of an acrobat in the city without paying; however, a janissary, who was hired as a doorkeeper, stopped him. The seaman insisted on demanding admission and argued with the janissary. When the seaman was turned down, he gathered his Venetian friends, came back, and killed the soldier and wounded some others. Immediately afterwards, the janissaries in the city stormed the Sakız Han, the building in which the fugitive seamen were hiding. The janissaries set the building on fire and burned the Venetians alive together with it. The situation was exacerbated when “a group of rioters,” reportedly Greeks, became involved in the events and plundered and burned many other buildings in the city. As a result, Izmir went to rack and ruin in just a short time. A Greek school, nine consular buildings, many hans, 1,500 houses, and 3,000 shops were completely consumed in the fire and subsequent looting.129 On June 19, 1811, the janissaries, “from a dissatisfaction to the Government,” started another fire in the city. The fire caused human casualties and enormous material damage. In five hours, it consumed all bazaars, five mosques, seven mansions, twelve chapels, at least twenty hans, eighty coffee houses, 100 “fire-proof” storage buildings, 300 houses, and 6,000                                                                                                                           127

Rauf Beyru, 19. Yüzyılda İzmir’de Doğal Afetler (Izmir: İ zmir Bü yü kş ehir Belediyesi, 2011), 88-89. “A French Journal, published at Antwerp, contains the following letter from General Jourdan,” Times (London), June 14, 1796. 129 Necmi Ülker, “1797 Olayı ve İzmir’in Yakılması,” Ege Üniversitesi Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 2 (1984): 117-58. 128

62    

shops.130 Fires continued to ravage the city throughout the nineteenth century. The fires in November 1816, January 1820, September 1825, August 1825, June 1834, and July 1841 left behind considerable material damage and hundreds of casualties.131 The fire in 1845 was the worst of all fires in the nineteenth century. It broke out on a scorching hot afternoon on the 3rd of July. The fire started in a lodge at the İmamoğlu Han and spread rapidly and enveloped the entire city.132 After seventeen hours, 3,086 houses were completely destroyed.133 It is difficult to calculate the economic cost of the 1845 fire in today’s terms but, besides causing material damage, it paralyzed daily life in the city. Urban fires were especially difficult to mitigate during the hot and dry summer months. Izmir, receiving little rainfall between June and September, lay in a high fire risk zone. The heat also dried up the water in the nearby creeks, rivulets, and pools during the summer, making it difficult for city dwellers to fight the flames. The tulumbacılar, the men of the fire brigades, did not exist until the late nineteenth century and urban residents did not know how to handle the fire.

Urban Sanitation and Epidemic Diseases

Biological disasters were also major killers and must be added to natural and anthropogenic disasters. The outbreaks of infectious diseases were even more dreadful than severe earthquakes and fires in Izmir in the early modern period. The most destructive and appalling form of pestilence was the bubonic plague, or the “Black Death,” which arrived in                                                                                                                           130

“Smyrna, June 19, 1811,” Times (London), Aug. 20, 1811. Times (London), Jan. 6, 1817; Feb. 14, 1820; Nov. 14, 1825; AEF, CCC, vol. 43, Smyrne, June 4, 1834; CCC, vol. 43, June 6, 1834; and L’echo d’Orient, July 30, 1841. 132 Kemalettin Kuzucu, “1845 İzmir Yangını,” Toplumsal Tarih 11, no. 62 (Feb. 1999): 20-25 and Nahide Şimşir, “1845 İzmir Yangını,” in XIII. Türk Tarih Kongresi Bildirileri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2002), 25577. 133 Şimşir, 259. 131

63    

the Mediterranean basin in the 1340s and thwarted population growth for several centuries.134 Izmir, like other Mediterranean port-cities that had constant contact with a wider world, was a hub of plague in the early modern period. It was more susceptible to epidemic diseases than many other cities in the empire. The bubonic plague was a recurrent and unwelcome visitor in the city from the seventeeth into the mid-nineteenth century. It decimated populations with catastrophic effects on urban and economic life and did not die out completely until the second half of the nineteenth century. Due to the lack of local sources, almost all the information about this calamity comes from European sources. Diplomatic correspondence, letters, and reports, as well as the accounts of European travelers contain some information regarding plague occurrences and their consquences in Izmir. In addition to them, articles and readers’ letters in local newspapers further attest to the presence of this contagious disease in the city. Izmir was ravaged by plague in eighty years out of a total of 150 years between 1700 and 1850.135 That is to say, an outbreak of plague struck the city on an average of every two years. The epidemic visited the city frequently and several years in row. In some years, it stayed in the city for an extended period of time such as from 1726 to 1730, 1734 to 1743, 1747 to 1751, 1757 to 1772, and 1783 to 1795.136 No less than fifty-four outbreaks of plague occurred in the city in the eighteenth century. Three of these outbreaks were severe, in the years 1758, 1760, and 1765, during which the city reportedly lost half of its inhabitants.137 The city recovered from the pestilence and the population picked up in a few years. However,                                                                                                                           134

William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1976), 161-67; Michael W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 48-52. For the history of plague in the Ottoman Empire, see: Daniel Panzac, La peste dans l’empire Ottoman (Leuven: Éditions Peeters, 1985) and Nükhet Varlık, “Conquest, Urbanization, and Plague Networks in the Ottoman Empire, 1453-1600,” in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead (London: Routledge, 2011), 251-63. 135 Panzac, 124. 136 Ibid. and idem, “La peste à Smyrne au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales. Sciences Sociales 4 (July-Aug. 1973): 109293. 137 Panzac, La peste dans l’empire Ottoman, 379.

64    

another visitation in 1784 turned the streets of Izmir into mortal alleys. “The plague continues its ravages,” wrote the French consul in Izmir in the summer of that year, “we do not remember to have seen such a severe [outbreak]. It kills 300 to 400 people everyday and sometimes beyond.”138 We know neither the exact number of deaths, nor the reason for the deaths. What we know is that the outbreak in 1784 was unprecedented in its extent and speed. In a short time, it spread through the empire and did not disappear until 1787.139 This last plague epidemic of the eighteenth century reportedly took the lives of 15-16,000 people in Izmir.140 However, despite disruptions in public health and santiation, manufacturing and commerce continued to grow. The city continued to draw migrants from and outside the empire on an increasing scale and the population never diminished for long. The plague continued to cause ravages in the city during the early decades of the nineteenth century. According to the correspondent of La Presse, there were six plague outbreaks in Izmir between 1800 and 1837. Two of these outbreaks were catastrophic; the first one took place in 1812-19 and reached its climax in 1814.141 According to one observer, it killed 30,000 people in the city in one year.142 The second catastrophic outbreak was much shorter and lasted from 1835 to 1837, though its ravages were not less terrible.143 In only one year, 1837, the disease killed 15,000 people and the population of Izmir dropped from 130,000 to 115,000.144 When plague visited Izmir, it could turn a vibrant city into a ghost town within a matter of weeks. Those who could afford to would leave the city for a longer period; others would seek shelter in the surrounding country. The streets would become empty and the shops                                                                                                                           138

ACCM, J 339, June 22, 1784. Panzac, La peste dans l’empire Ottoman, 66-67. 140 Ibid., 379. 141 La Presse, Apr. 3, 1838. 142 Jowett, 57. 143 La Presse, Apr. 3, 1838. 144 Ibid. 139

65    

and manufacturers would shut down. In one of the visitations of plague in 1765, Richard Chandler, who spent some time in the city, noted the following: “Many of the people abandon their dwellings, and live abroad, under tents. The islanders return home and the streets of the Frank quarter, which is exceedingly populous, cease to be trodden.”145 In the case of plague, those who remained in the city would shut their doors to visitors, even to the market-men. They supplied their basic needs for bread and other dietary staples in alternative ways. “They receive their provisions from people who, in those times of general dismay, market for them,” wrote Charles Wilkinson in 1806, “The meats are put into baskets, let down by cords from the windows, and on being drawn up, immediately thrown into water, to prevent infection.”146 The causes of plague were not known exactly at the time, but contemporary observers attributed it to three major conditions. The first one was climate. There was a widespread belief that the plague spread quickly during the summer months. In the summer of 1784, the French consul in Izmir reported, “everything here suffers from the plague that has been seen since the beginning of April.”147 A French doctor, who lived in Istanbul for nine years and wrote a book on plague, also claimed that the epidemic broke out in April in Izmir, as well as in Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt, and decimated the populations until July.148 The French historian Daniel Panzac analyzed the outbreaks in the city and concluded that the most severe epidemics always started in March, reached their acme in June, and disappeared in September.149 The second reason plague spread so fast in Izmir was the lack of quarantine organization. Fleas and germs cannot jump far by themselves, but humans or animals can                                                                                                                           145

Richard Chandler, Travels in Asia Minor, and Greece (London: Booker and Priestley, 1817), 76. Charles Wilkinson, A Tour through Asia Minor and the Greek Islands (London: Darton and Harvey, 1806), 369. 147 AN, AE. B1066, May 15, 1784. 148 A. Brayer, Neuf années à Constantinople, Vol. II (Paris: Bellizard, Barthès, Dufour et Lowell, 1836), 48-49. 149 Panzac, La peste dans l’empire Ottoman, 222. 146

66    

convey them over long distances. Given the fact that the plague outbreaks in the city coincided with the arrival of caravans, it can be concluded that the camels, horses, and donkeys of caravans carried plague-transmitting fleas.150 Land merchants, travelers, couriers, nomads, pilgrims, soldiers, and fugitives also transported plague, carrying the fleas in their wool blankets, cotton bags, and gunnysacks. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, there was no policy towards persons coming by sea, either. Because seafarers, sailors, and merchant seamen established contact with local crowds immediately on their arrival and mingled freely with them, plague spread at an unprecedented rate. In short, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, bubonic plague continued to reach the city by both land and sea. There was no regulation for the prevention and control of disease. In a port-city through which people and goods constantly moved, the transmission of plague from one person to another was unavoidable. Plague was gradually tamed through the enforcement of quarantine measures on land and sea in the 1840s.151 The third reason to which local residents and observers attributed plague was the ignorance and apathy of the Turks (i.e., Muslims). If any member of a European family in the city contracted the plague, the person was immediately taken to the hospital; the members of the family sprinkled themselves with vinegar and were fumigated. Moreover, they could leave their house and live somewhere else for forty days.152 According to European observers, however, Turks distinguished themselves by their fatalistic attitude towards the plague. In 1784, the French consul in Izmir complained about predestinarianism among the Turks as follows: “mortality among them [Turks] increases every day because they do not take any

                                                                                                                          150

The caravans arrived in Izmir in February, July, and October (Tavernier, 105; Bruyn, 88; and Tournefort, 372). 151 For the institution of quarantines in the Ottoman Empire, see Birsen Bulmuş, Plague, Quarantines and Geopolitics in the Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012). 152 Thomas MacGill, Travels in Turkey, Italy, and Russia, Vol. I (London: John Murray, 1808), 122.

67    

kind of precaution.”153 Thomas MacGill, after his visit to Izmir in 1804, wrote that the plague could be stopped if the Turks took proper precautions. However, he said, “the Turks are predestinarians, and refuse to employ any means, either for the prevention of the disorder or for their recovery: they are now, however, beginning to see their folly, and to inquire why the Franks do not die of the plague.”154 In 1814, William Jowett described how the funeral practice of the Turks precipitated the spread of the disease as follows: They took no precautions. The crier from the Mosque, announced, at certain hours, who died; inviting friends to accompany them to the grave: these friends not only attended to the deceased, but carried them on their shoulders: every ten yards, a change of friends would press forward to share in the pious work. They also washed them at a fountain, before they interred them; but in a short time, the dead were too numerous to allow of the continuance of this practice. How truly this deserves to be classed among the four sore judgements!155 The plague was not a threat to the populations in Izmir for the majority of the nineteenth century. Except for the outbreaks in its opening decades, no major plague outbreak occured in the city in this period. Urban sanitation, however, was poor at all times and there was not any improvement at least until the urban reforms of the Tanzimat Era. Even though Izmir was not an industrial city and it did not have smoky and noisy factories like those in Britain, France, or Germany, human and animal wastes and other pollutants caused problems of hygiene in the city. Keeping the body clean was important for all religious groups and public baths served this purpose. European visitors were impressed by the public baths in Izmir and described their cleanness in detail.156 Furthermore, ritual ablution was an important part of Islam, and Muslims visited fountains in the courtyard of mosques and hans to perform this duty. Contrary to the relative cleanliness of the people, the lack of sanitation and hygiene                                                                                                                           153

AN, AE. B1066, June 9, 1784. MacGill, 119. 155 Jowett, 57. 156 Johannes Aegidius van Egmond, Travels through Part of Europe, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Archipelago, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mount Sinai, etc., Vol. I (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1759), 93; “Scenes in the Levant,” The American Monthly Magazine 6, no. 1 (Sept. 1835): 268 154

68    

in the streets of Izmir was a major concern. Especially in the poorer districts, piles of foulsmelling garbage and the stink flowing in open sewers shocked even European travelers, who came from the industrializing capitals of Europe, where the severe lack of sanitation was a serious matter of concern. In Izmir, the only source of drinking water was nearby springs whose waters reached street pumps, fountains and wells through an underground system of canals and pipes. In the case of heavy rains and inundations, urban wells and underground water supplies became seriously polluted, contaminating water for the urbanites’ most basic needs and giving way to the spread of epidemics. Furthermore, mountains of garbage and the associated vermin also courted infectious water- and food-borne diseases such as cholera, diphtheria and typhoid. After the disappearance of the bubonic plague in the 1840s, the most dreadful of all infectious diseases in the city was indisputably cholera. The disease had already been known in Asia and Africa for a long time. It came to Europe much later and, given the emerging network of steamships and railways, spread around the continent quickly. Cholera made its first appearance in the Ottoman Empire in 1830-1831 and diffused across the empire at an unprecedented rate.157 It reportedly arrived in Izmir from Odessa in September 1831 and became the scourge of the city until the last decades of the nineteenth century.158 The disease, striking periodically, infested populations and caused disruptions in social and economic life in the city. Some other epidemics such as yellow fever, typhus, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and tuberculosis also scourged the city during the nineteenth century. Some observers asserted that yellow fewer, an epidemic little known except in America, was worse than plague. For example, Thomas MacGill, who visited the city in 1804, wrote, “they [the Turks] dread the yellow fever much more than the plague, and with far greater reason, as the plague can be                                                                                                                           157 158

Panzac, La peste dans l’empire Ottoman, 412 and Quataert, “The Age of Reforms,” 788-89. Ibid., 413 and 417.

69    

communicated only by contact, whereas the former [the yellow fever] taints the air.”159 Epidemic diseases continued to threaten inhabitants and newcomers to the city until the end of the nineteenth century. Although the waves of epidemic diseases ravaged populations without distinction, refugees, deserters, migrants, and people from the lower classes were particularly susceptible to epidemic diseases due to undernourishment, lack of hygiene, and the weakness of their immune system. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the protection of public health was not a major consideration for urban authorities. The sanitary situation would start to improve with the urban reforms of the Tanzimat Period and developments in medical science and technology in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Countryside: Desertion, Isolation, and Poverty

From the sixteenth and seventeenth into the nineteenth century, Izmir was a city where life was cheap, and living was hard. Death was all around and touched everybody, rich and poor, old and young, and Muslim and non-Muslim. Izmir was a port-city, where life was restricted within the city walls, and the values, attitudes, and practices of inhabitants were mainly influenced by religion. Its residents, especially Muslims, seeking magical explanations for earthquakes and other natural disasters, made sense of the personal and societal disruptions occasioned by urban disasters through the prism of religion. Therefore, they were more concerned with not taking risks and maintaining their social and economic status rather than understanding the natural environment in which they lived. In this period of social distancing, except for people moving to the city, overall mobility between villages and towns was low. The people in the city and the countryside lived in separate spaces, divided by an invisible boundary. This boundary set urban dwellers physically, socially, and mentally apart                                                                                                                           159

MacGill, 120.

70    

from the rest of the country. Not only the people who inhabited in the city, but also visitors there, seemed to have little interest in looking beyond its walls. Travelers, merchants, pilgrims, artists, mercenaries, and all sorts of itinerant people who visited Izmir for some reason in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, preferred not to leave the urban areas before they sailed off to Istanbul, Alexandria, Piraeus, or the Aegean Islands. Except for excursions made to Ephesus and other nearby ruins, European visitors departed from Izmir without seeing its countryside. They largely bypassed the plains, valleys, mountains, rivers, and lakes of Western Anatolia. One observer noted the disinterest, or hesitation, of European travelers to explore the surroundings of Izmir as follows: “Many travellers visit but little more of Smyrna than its bazaars and few take the trouble of making themselves acquainted with its environ.”160 In this period, a thinly scattered population who earned their livelihood either by transhumance or subsistence characterized the Western Anatolian countryside. Nomads, known also as yürüks or Turcomans, moved to the region from Central and Eastern Anatolia, Kurdistan, Syria, and Iraq and partially filled the vacuum created by the deserters of the Celali Revolts. They were very successful in adapting to, and benefiting from, the unfavorable environmental conditions they encountered. They were seen along the banks of rivers and streams, as well as in the surrounding mountain pasturelands.161 Nomads had few material possessions besides camels, horses, cattle, and sheep. Because they scattered over a vast area, it was difficult to determine the number of a single tribe or group. “They live in tents, of which you find perhaps twenty together with their herds of cattle, horses, and camels around them, and wander about following the pasture,” noted Charles Robert Cockerell in 1810, and added that “they consider themselves just as much part of the inhabitants as the settled                                                                                                                           160

Knight, 230. William John Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia, Vol. I (London: John Murray, 1842), 151.

161

71    

population, and are well armed and dressed.”162 John Galt beheld the passing of a wandering tribe near Ephesus in 1813, which he claimed to consist of 100 individuals, three camels, and numerous cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, and poultry.163 Nomads had no fixed residency, but moved from place to place according to grazing needs of their livestock. From the perspective of Europeans, nomads seemed to roam aimlessly. However, contrary to European assumptions, the routes by which the nomads traveled and the grasslands they live were not random. They were assigned by political authorities and agreed upon by both nomads and sedentary people. During the winter they moved down to coastal plains and lake and riversides. In the summer, they left the lowlands to take yaylaks (summer habitations) in the surrounding mountains.164 As a matter of fact, nomads in Western Anatolia were not entirely pastoral people. They did not restrict their economy to animal husbandry and, besides their day-to-day herding practices, they were involved in the agricultural economy. They utilized the fields in the plains and basins periodically, cultivating foods and fibers for their daily needs. Through the opening of new fields to tillage and the clearing of forests and woodlands, they provided food and fuel for themselves and fodder for their cattle, which, regrettably, intensified pressure on natural resources.165 Together with the peasants of nearby villages, agro-pastoral nomads created mezraas, or periodic settlements, which they converted in the second half of the nineteenth century into permanent villages.166 Because most of the Europeans traveled between spring                                                                                                                           162

Samuel Pepys Cockerell, ed., Travels in Southern Europe and the Levant, 1810-1817. The Journal of C. R. Cockerell, R. A. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903),, 142-43. 163 John Galt, Letters from the Levant (London: Cadell and Davies, 1813), 294. 164 Faruk Tabak, The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550-1870 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008), 198. 165 Ibid., 192. 166 Yücel Terzibaşoğlu, “Landlords, Nomads and Refugees: Struggles over Land and Population Movements in North-western Anatolia, 1877-1914” (London: University of London Ph.D. Diss, 2003), 22. The Ottoman government’s efforts to sedentarize nomads in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not fruitful. Even though the Tanzimat policies can be seen as a partial success, the process of sedentarization of nomads was not completed until the second half of the twentieth-century.

72    

and fall, a season when the nomads were in their summer pastures in the mountains, their observations were for a short period of time and their encounter with nomads was limited. Nomads’ contribution to the urban economy by providing meat and dairy products, as well as supplying the merchants with camels and horses, was often overlooked. Europeans’ perception of the Western Anatolian countryside as an “empty and desolate” space was similarly inaccurate. European observers did not know the use of land in ways that was different from in Europe, such as fallow land and hunting and grazing ground. Furthermore, because Europeans drew a firm line between nomads and peasants, it was hard for them to comprehend the lifestyle of these quasi-sedentary people with nomadic habits.167 Inhabitants in small villages and hamlets throughout the region, on the other hand, lived a poor and simple life in their adobe houses and cottages, and in most cases, at close quarters with their livestock. Rural inhabitants in the countryside were born, lived, and died within a small radius of their homes with little knowledge of what was going on in the wider world. Yet, they were not completely unaware of life in other parts of the region. Peddlers, vendors, and traveling salesmen, for example, had some sort of connection to local and regional markets. They traversed the country up and down and supplied information about other towns and villages to their hometowns. These intermediaries between the city and the countryside provided people living on either side with intelligence about what was going on in the “other” side. Two or three centuries ago, however, traveling through Western Anatolia was not a thing of pleasure. The inadequacy of roads and marketing infrastructure hindered the movement of people and goods across the country. Although there were thousands of miles of railway lines in England, France, and Germany in the 1840s and 50s, Anatolia was a vast area that did not have a single railway track. The first railway tracks in the Ottoman Empire were                                                                                                                           167

Terzibaşoğlu, 67.

73    

laid between Chernovoda on the Danube and Constanta on the Black Sea coast in 1860, and the railroad reached Western Anatolia in 1866. Road construction, aside from its financial cost, was a labor-intensive undertaking and did not enter the government’s agenda until the late nineteenth century. In the absence of railroads and paved streets, the Ottomans depended on historic trade routes across Eurasia, some of which dated back to the Roman Empire.168 Historic trade roads in Western Anatolia mostly followed the topography, sticking close to watersheds and streams. Fertile river valleys, divided by mountain ranges in the east-west direction, had created flat and smooth avenues free from forests and rocks and facilitated the movement of people and goods between the coast and the interior. Nevertheless, these “natural avenues” were narrow and tough, and could be impassible in case of excessive rain. Especially during the winter rains, the Gediz, Küçük Menderes, and Büyük Menderes rivers frequently burst their banks and flooded the surrounding plains.169 In this period of the year, rains and torrents could even wash the roads in the lowlands away and the connection between major towns could be interrupted for weeks, since there were “no regulations to keep the roads in repair.”170 Some roads and trails could become quite impassable for horses and cause them frequently to be stuck in the mud and fall. In such an instance near Soma in the 1810s, Charles Robert Cockerell reported: “The roads were so heavy that our baggage horse fell and I thought we should never get him up again.”171 A long and tedious journey on horseback over a broken country and rough roads was something to be remembered as a backbreaking                                                                                                                           168

For a study on the reconstruction and charting of historical network of Anatolia, see: Usha M. Luther, Historical Route Network of Anatolia (Istanbul-Izmir-Konya) 1550’s to 1850’s: A Methodological Study (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 1989). 169 For example, in October 1829 one traveler noted near Balıkesir the following: “we crossed another range of hills and descended into a dreary plain, which in winter is overflowed and becomes a lake.” John Fuller, Narratives of a Tour through some Parts of the Turkish Empire, (London: John Murray, 1830), 60. 170 William Hunter, Travels through France, Turkey, and Hungary to Vienna in 1792, Vol. I (London: J. White, 1803), 227. 171 Cockerell, 141.

74    

experience. “I traveled with the Tartar who conveyed the post, and night and day, with the intermission of two or three hours of repose, we continued our route,” wrote one traveler on his way from Bursa to Manisa in the winter of 1825 and added: “there was no other road than the track of a horse across the country, and at night it was no easy matter to keep in the right direction, or to keep our seats: it rained incessantly the first three days.”172 The poor condition of roads was the most important obstacle to the delivery of items from the interior to the coast. The roads and tracks that connected Izmir to its surrounding territory and beyond were in dust and dirt for the major parts of the year. Goods in bulk were shipped via sailing vessels, as sea transport was cheaper and faster than land transport. However, some major commercial centers such as Kayseri, Ankara, Tokat, Antep, and Urfa were in the interior and were accessible only by land routes.173 Therefore, even though ships transported the majority of goods, trade with cities in the interior depended on “ships of the desert”: camel caravans. Goods and products from the inland cities and towns in Anatolia, Syria, and Iran reached Izmir by land, but at enormous costs and difficulties. “Shipment by land had been prohibitively expensive,” as Donald Quataert has noted, “because – except for the shortest distances – the fodder the animals consumed cost more than the goods carried.”174 The difficulty and cost of moving agricultural products, raw materials, fibers, and valuables across the landscape discouraged a wider trade, limited the growth of the city, and retarded its integration with the countryside. The shipment of goods over land had been entirely done by draft animals before the radical changes brought by the railways. Merchants used wagons to a certain extent; however, their use of wagons was limited to towns because the roads in the countryside were not                                                                                                                           172

Richard Robert Madden, Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, Vol. I (London: Colburne, 1829), 145-46. 173 Suraiya Faroqhi, “Camels, Wagons, and the Ottoman State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 14 (1982): 524. 174 Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 119.

75    

suitable for wheeled transportation.175 While merchants and traders preferred mules, horses, donkeys, and oxen for shorter distances, at long distances camels were used because they were “swift, strong, patient, and tractable.”176 A camel could carry a cargo weight of 550 pounds, while mules and horses had the ability to carry 420 pounds of goods.177 Moreover, a camel could eat, walk, and sleep “under its burden, often for weeks at a time.”178 Horses, on the other hand, because of their speed, were used for the purpose of transporting people, carrying letters, and conveying important deliveries.179 To say it differently, when time mattered, horses served as couriers like today’s “priority mail.” European visitors, who noted the sight of strings of camels proceeding slowly through the Western Anatolian plains, give detailed information about the organization of caravans, as well as the number and speed of camels they included.180 A caravan might be made up of hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of camels traveling together. John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, noted in 1739 the arrival of three thousand camels in a caravan bringing Persian commodities to the city.181 “Numerous caravans,” wrote Charles Wilkinson in 1806, “bring from the interior of Asia Minor cotton, the silky fleeces of Angora, carpets and silk from Persia, drugs of all kinds, wax, figs, and etc.”182 Thomas Robert Jollife confirmed this in June 1817 and claimed, “caravans from there [Persia] bring 200 bales or more in the course of a year.”183

                                                                                                                          175

Ibid., “The Age of Reforms, 1812-1914,” in An Economic and Social History, 817. Hunter, 184. 177 Quataert, “The Age of Reforms,” 817. 178 “Use of Camels for Transport in Turkey,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 57 (Nov. 1908): 992. 179 Quataert, “The Age of Reforms,” 817. 180 Many European travelers noted the sight of strings of camels (Chandler, 85 and Cockerell, 146). 181 John Montagu Sandwich, Earl of, A Voyage Performed by the Late Earl of Sandwich Round the Mediterranean in the Years 1738 and 1739 (London: Lackington, 1807), 309. 182 Wilkinson, 374. 183 Thomas Robert Jollife, Narrative of an Excursion from Corfu to Smyrna (London: Black, Young, and Young, 1827), 257. 176

76    

Nomadic tribes owned most of the camels in the region and managed the caravans.184 A person called karavanbaşı (head of caravan) was responsible for everything from the route to be followed to halting places. Depending on the extent of business, two or more nomads assisted him in the loading and unloading of the animals, as well as in the organization of their march.185 In a caravan, in addition to merchants and intermediaries, who either owned or were responsible for the merchandise transported, travelers, pilgrims, and vagabonds trailed behind the caravan because of security concerns. Camels moved slowly because frequent delays took place “by stopping to shift, or secure the merchandise upon the saddles.”186 As William Hunter reported in 1792, “Their [camels’] ordinary pace is three miles per hour and they halt at stated distances.”187 With this information, it can be calculated that an average caravan did not travel more than 25-30 miles per day. Caravans from long distances arrived in the city regularly in February, June, and October and entered the city through the Caravan Bridge.188 The bridge was “a spot of general attraction,” as one traveler noted in 1834, where hundreds of camels could be seen making their way patiently and wearily from the country to the city (Figure 1).189 Another visitor counted more than one hundred camels in a quarter hour and likened the passage of strings of camels in opposite directions to each other to “the convoys on a railway.”190 In the orientalist tradition, the camel is an animal of the desert. It is a part of the Western stereotype of the slow-moving, lifeless, and stagnant Orient. Therefore, spotting a camel caravan and describing it in detail in his account was the ultimate dream of every European observer. Such a spotting made a traveler feel that he had arrived in the

                                                                                                                          184

Reşat Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 99. John Griffiths, Travels in Europe, Asia Minor, and Arabia (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1805), 251. 186 Ibid., 252-53. 187 Hunter, 184. 188 Tavernier, 93. 189 Francis Vyvyan Jago Arundell, Discoveries in Asia Minor. Vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1834), 5. 190 Comte Joseph d’Estourmel, Journal d‘un Voyage en Orient (Paris: Crapelet, 1848), 207. 185

77    

Orient. Furthermore, camels offered a stark contrast to wheeled transport, which symbolized advancement in technology. For European visitors, as outsiders, the wheelless society was “visibly peculiar,” and the camel caravan was considered as “a romantic wonder instead of a commonplace means of transportation.”191 For example, Alexander William Kinglake, who set out a tour through the Ottoman Empire in 1835, wrote, “no one had ever heard of horses being used for drawing a carriage in this part of the world.”192 Kinglake’s biased statement, however, does not reflect the reality of rural life in the region. Middle Eastern people were aware of wheeled transport and they had previously used it from time to time. In Ottoman times, rural residents made only limited use of wheeled transport, not, as European visitors claimed, for psychological and ideological, but for practical reasons. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the bulk of Izmir’s trade depended on long-distance trade; and therefore, camel caravans were considered the best means of transportation. Camels and other draft animals supplied goods and products from faraway places to the city, whereas horse or mule drawn carts were used for short distances. However, in Western Europe the situation was different. Distances were much shorter and the merchandise to be transported was bulky and heavy.

                                                                                                                          191

Richard W. Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 223. Alexander William Kinglake, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East (Auburn, NY: J.C Derby & Co., 1845), 20.

192

78    

Figure 1: The Caravan Bridge

Source: American University of Beirut, Blatchford Collection

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, whether one moved on foot or on horseback, or joined a caravan, the journeys were long and difficult. “This mode of travelling,” wrote David Urquhart in 1839, “involves hardship, exposure, and fatigue.”193 For a foreigner traveling in the unknown territory of Western Anatolia, a typical journey began at dawn and lasted all day long until sunset. The distances were measured not in kilometers or in miles, but in weeks, days, and hours. In 1808, one needed more than one day on horseback to go from Izmir to Ephesus, which is only fifty miles away from the city.194 In 1836, it took William Hamilton six hours to reach Turgutlu from Sardis, a distance of a mere nineteen

                                                                                                                          193 194

David Urquhart, The Spirit of the East, Vol. I (London: Henry Colburn, 1839), 7. MacGill, 140.

79    

miles.195 The shortening of travel time between Izmir and its hinterland took place in close correspondence with the evolution of transportation. With the arrival of the railway in 1866, travel time from Izmir to Ephesus was reduced to three hours and from Turgutlu to Sardis to an hour. However, it would be wrong to assume that the problem of long journeys over rough and bad roads at the beginning of the nineteenth century was unique to the Ottoman Empire. Before the railway age started, for much of the eighteenth century, the roads in in Western Europe were not much better. For example, in the mid-1750s a trip from London to Edinburgh took ten days in summer and twelve days in winter; the time was reduced to less than fourtyeight hours as late as 1836.196 In early modern Western Anatolia, in addition to the poor condition of roads, travelers expected certain risks and problems. What disappointed European visitors most in their arduous and long journeys in the region was the perceived barrenness and emptiness of the country. In this period, forsaken plains, deserted fields, and abandoned villages and gardens thrilled those who entered this terra incognita. One frustrated European traveler, reporting on his eastern journey in 1792, that he rode for several hours on the way from Manisa and Akhisar “through a barren and uncultivated country.”197 John Griffiths, on his way from Afyon to Konya in 1805, passed through a country, which was “wholly neglected, and of villages almost wholly depopulated.”198 Charles Robert Cockerell recorded in 1810 that he came across “only one village and a few Turcomans” in his nine hours’ journey from Akhisar to Sart.199 When he arrived at the banks of the Gediz River, he encountered a scene he said he would never forget. He wrote: “It was glorious country up the river, but the cultivation and

                                                                                                                          195

Hamilton, 389. Philip S. Bagwell, The Transport Revolution, 1770-1985 (London: Routledge, 1988), 30. 197 Hunter, 216. 198 Griffiths, 265. 199 Cockerell, 142. 196

80    

the rich population were behind us, and in front was a continued desert.”200 In some places, as John Galt noted in 1813, the only indicator that people lived there in the past was cypresses that shadowed cemeteries and graves: “Not a habitation was to be seen, but we passed several cemeteries with their dull cypresses and tomb-stones, which served to shew that the country had once been inhabited.”201 Richard Robert Madden described in 1829 the desolate appearance of Western Anatolia as follows: I have little to say but that fatigue of the road is aggravated by the spectacle of a fine country and a rich soil uncultivated and unpeopled; for the first time in my life, I travelled whole days without seeing a peasant, and indeed from Brusa to Magnesia, without seeing as many scattered houses as would form a decent hamlet.202 As can be seen in these examples, European travelers generally had a negative vision of the countryside, which provided them an opportunity “to see many exhibitions of the effects of Turkish despotism displayed in the wretched condition of the people, and the desolation of a vast extent of territory.”203 Therefore, they emphasized the wilderness they were exposed to with descriptions such as “a bleak and barren” environment, “a desolate country,” or “a wretched village.” They drew a stark contrast between Europe and the Middle East and, even though there were people in places that could not be seen from the roads they traveled, they presented fabricated constructs of Ottoman lands to the reader at home. Another theme European travelers favored was farmers’ and villagers’ struggle to cope with extremely difficult social and environmental conditions. Many of them fantasized the countryside as a desert, “not only in the geographical sense of the term, but also a wider one, linking barrenness and dearth of inhabitants with notions of willful neglect,

                                                                                                                          200

Ibid., 143. Galt, 277. 202 Madden, 145. 203 Ibid., 20. 201

81    

governmental oppression and technological backwardness.”204 They used the countryside as a metaphor to describe the misery of land that had suffered considerable neglect for many years under the sultans’ tyrannical rule. The Ottoman people, often portrayed as sluggish and indifferent individuals, were also held responsible for the country’s predicament. Moreover, they claimed that poor farming methods and outdated tools were also related to backwardness and primitivism. They placed a strong emphasis upon the contribution of scientific knowledge, technology, and mechanization to the development of agriculture in Western Europe. They made sarcastic statements about the use of simple agricultural implements such as the wooden plow, the harrow, and the threshing sled. For example, John Fuller referred to the ploughs he had seen near a village as belonging “to the age of Triptolemus, consisting simply of a bent stick with an arrow-shaped iron attached to it” and the threshing sled to “an oblong board stuck full on the lower side with sharp stones, larger than gun-flints but of the same shape.”205 In fact, the reality was not that the countryside was as empty and desolate as European visitors portrayed, nor the soil was badly tilled and cultivated in the Ottoman Empire, but that Western Europe, especially England, were taking giant steps forward in agricultural innovation, scientific knowledge, and training. The time they spent in the interior was limited and their observations, made during their short stays, could be superficial and biased. Contrary to European visitors’ observations, the isolation of villages and hamlets was never total. Problems of communication and transport existed, as in many parts of Europe at that time; however, rural people who had left the lowlands for the mountains or urban centers had some sort of connection to their previous habitats. Some rural people visited the homes they had abandoned periodically, repaired them roughly, stayed for a while, and even utilized their lands. Moreover, even though farmers and villagers lived in relative isolation from each                                                                                                                           204

Reinhold Schiffer, Oriental Panorama: British Travelers in 19th Century Turkey (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 89. 205 Fuller, 59.

82    

other, a system of inter-regional trade existed and inhabitants of settlements far apart gathered in certain villages for holding public markets. Rural people not only exchanged their merchandise in such markets but also had a chance to know others’ habits and customs. For example, the British traveler and antiquarian Francis Arundell, who passed through Salihli in 1834 on a market day, witnessed the crowd in the village and wrote, “every hole in the village was filled to overflowing.”206 Rural insecurity was a common problem throughout the Mediterranean and its roots can be traced to previous centuries. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Little Ice Age placed an increasing burden on agriculture and caused economic and social distress for the people.207 There was a serious shortage of cultivated land, which further intensified environmental scarcity and the prevalence of rural poverty. A series of disruptions, known collectively as the “Celali revolts,” broke out in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.208 The revolts led to large numbers of peasants fleeing their lands in favor of highlands and mountains and determined the re-distribution of population throughout Anatolia. From the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth century, therefore, vast areas of the Western Anatolian countryside remained strangely unpopulated.209 In this period of rural insecurity the number of bandits rose in rural areas in direct proportion to rural-urban and lowland-highland migrations. Small bands of armed men roamed through the rural areas, threatening the safety and security of foreigners. They resorted to theft and violence, stealing money and food, and hi-jacking merchants and travelers. Therefore, due to the possibility of attack, robbery, kidnapping, and even murder by                                                                                                                           206

Arundell, Discoveries in Asia Minor, Vol. I, 31. For the Little Ice Age in the Ottoman Empire, see White, The Climate of Rebellion. 208 For more information on the Celali Revolts, see Mustafa Akdağ, Türk Halkının Dirlik ve Düzenlik Kavgası: “Celalı̂ İsyanları” (Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1975) and William Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 15911611 (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1983). 209 The changing human and ecological landscape of the Mediterranean basin has been recently analyzed by Faruk Tabak in his comprehensive study The Waning of the Mediterranean. 207

83    

brigands, a trip into the interior could turn into a hazardous venture for any traveler. The occurrences of banditry, robbery, and theft in the Western Anatolian countryside colored the accounts of European visitors. These accounts show us that they both feared and expressed admiration for bandits’ unlawful actions. Some of them felt great empathy for the bandits and saw them as a symbol of resistance to the oppression and injustice of a despotic government. European travelers depicted these “social bandits,” of Hobsbawn’s definition, as mythical figures in their accounts and used them for the purpose of reinforcing the view that the countryside was desolate and backward and the government authority was weak.210 Yet, historical reality is different than told by European observers. The situation was not as grave as it was portrayed. The countryside was not entirely wild and empty, nor was it under the control of mavericks and brigands. Contrary to the claims of some European observers, brigands in the countryside did not show any kind of political animosity towards government authority, nor did they lose their loyalty to the sultan. The incidents, in which small groups of armed men attacked brigades, kidnapped, robbed, hit and even killed soldiers, are not only based on Europeans’ accounts, but also come from government documents.211 However, such incidents did not connote a threat to state authority in the countryside. The brigands favored the region because there was a growing trade and the network was easy to control thanks to the topography. They could play hide-and-seek between the roads on the foothills and the mountains rising behind them.212 In other words, the brigands’ motive was mainly economic, and the favorable geography and the expanding caravan trade in the Western Anatolian countryside attracted them like a magnet.                                                                                                                           210

Eric J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971), 13-56. 211 BOA, MD 239/236. 212 Schiffer, 72.

84    

Organized theft and armed robbery sometimes reached such an extent that it threatened peace and intimidated local people, necessitating the central government’s intervention. In such instances, the authorities did not hesitate to resort to large-scale military operations to meet the situation and punish protagonists. For example, in Saruhan province in 1803 and 1804, when bands of armed men intensified their attacks on merchants and travelers, authorities brought soldiers from as far away as the European provinces of the empire to ensure security in the province.213 In another instance reported by William Knight in 1838, a group of klephts, Greek outlaws or highwaymen, robbed the travelers on their way from Trianda (Torbalı) to Ephesus. However, Hüseyin Bey, the governor of Izmir at the time, soon captured them and hanged each of them in a different part of the city.214 There were also incidents when bandits formed larger groups and threatened towns and cities. For example, between 1736 and 1738, a rebellious figure named Sarıbeyoğlu, after ravaging the whole country, threatened to plunder Izmir. The rebels under his leadership blockaded the city and the caravans were not able to enter the city.215 There was no fighting force in the city equipped to resist Sarıbeyoğlu and his armed gang. The only thing the dwellers of Izmir could do was to build a wall to protect the town.216 As he marched on Izmir, merchants and officials in the city collected the ransom money Sarıbeyoğlu demanded. In return, he stayed away and continued his plundering in the countryside. Sarıbeyoğlu’s end came in April 1739 when he and his men were first outmaneuvered and then killed by Ottoman military forces.217 In short, small bands of armed men roamed throughout the surrounding area of Izmir, threatening the safety and security of people in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In some cases, bandits attacked villages and stole money and food, but in most cases their                                                                                                                           213

BOA, MD 218/206, MD 222/787, and MD 222/799. Knight, 252-53. 215 Ülker, XVII. ve XVIII. Yüzyıllarda, 35-41. 216 Pococke, 38. 217 Ülker, XVII. ve XVIII. Yüzyıllarda, 40. 214

85    

target was foreign merchants and travelers. They plundered camel caravans and robbed traveling merchants to seize their goods, or kidnapped foreigners for ransom. However, the problem of insecurity was not as dramatic as often portrayed by Europeans. Theft, robbery, kidnapping, and murder occurred, sometimes in reality, but sometimes only in the imagination of European travelers. Because narratives with depictions of butchers and cutthroats were more interesting for readers at home, European visitors included such narratives in their accounts. In addition to that, Western Anatolia was not an exception to the rest of the Mediterranean and the number of bandits in the countryside rose in direct proportion to issues and problems arising in the decades following the Little Ice Age. Banditry and brigandage continued to be an endemic problem to the region until the early twentieth century. Although they took different forms in the last decades of the empire, banditry and brigandage never ceased to exist. If their existence was one side of the coin, their chase, capture and punishment by the government were its other side; and European observers often overlooked this.218 A detailed literary analysis of European travelers in Western Anatolia is beyond the scope of this study; however it can be said that political, economical and ideological motivations played a significant role in their perception of the Western Anatolian countryside. European travelers arrived in the region with preconceived notions and mindsets, so they tried to establish a strong link between oriental despotism and the state of the country. The English geographer Denis Cosgrove has suggested that there are “ways of seeing” and “histories and historical geographies of seeing.”219 European observers varied in their cultures, genders, and so on; and when projecting images, each observer added to his own personal theological, cultural, and aesthetic interpretation to what existed in reality. Nevertheless, their reports                                                                                                                           218

Mühimme defterleri (registers of important events) from the early-nineteenth century contain many imperial orders regarding the suppression of bandits and robbers in Western Anatolia, such as BOA, MD 221/493, MD 234/288, MD 237/81, MD 239/49, MD 239/1452, and MD 240/957. 219 Denis Cosgrove, Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 5.

86    

testify to the contrast between the bustling port-city of Izmir, with caravans arriving from distant lands, and the relatively unproductive countryside immediately around it.

Conclusion

In the opening decades of the nineteenth century, notwithstanding its problems and inconveniences for regional residents, European observers continued to view Izmir through a different lens and emphasize its historical and environmental significance from their Western point of view. They attributed its historical development to the favorable geographical and climatic setting. To them, unique location and patterns of landscape, as well as certain natural advantages such as mild climate had determined Izmir as an important commercial center in the Eastern Mediterranean and solidified its standing in the Ottoman Empire. Although at the time Europeans spoke eloquently about its natural advantages and concluded that nature had endowed Izmir with a particular geographical location, favorable climatic conditions, and abundant flora and fauna, however, the city did not possess any significant “natural” advantages over other port-cities in the Levant. In the period under review, already-existing problems and conditions in Izmir were exacerbated by social and ecological changes wrought by the Little Ice Age. The influx of rural migrants in search of food, housing, and work added to the social woes of the city in terms of crime, garbage, and disease. In the early modern period, one could confront urban violence, dirt and filth, and natural and biological disasters in Ottoman Izmir. Waves of plague epidemics decimated populations, whereas fires, earthquakes, famines, and urban riots took lives of thousands of people. In other words, natural hazards, epidemic diseases, and all sorts of health problems made the city an unsafe and unsanitary place to live. 87    

The Western Anatolian countryside, on the other hand, was not all but a barren and hostile territory, where rural residents lived with a myriad of problems and in isolation from each other. Some considerable drawbacks and inconveniences particular to the region prevented the city from forming intimate linkages with the countryside and incorporate it into world economy. The nineteenth century had yet to witness the creation of an integrated economy in Western Anatolia and the transformation of an Ottoman port-city into a Mediterranean metropolis, which would form intimate linkages with the countryside.

88    

CHAPTER III REVERSING FORTUNES: DEMOGRAPHIC, ECONOMICAL, AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROCESSES

Introduction

In Western Anatolia, mountains, hills, valleys, plains, rivers, lakes, flora and fauna provided some advantages, but these advantages of nature did not come in the form of rewards until the people constructed a second nature on top of it. The lack of an adequate land transport network made it difficult and costly for merchants to bring bulky or lesser-valued agricultural goods and raw materials such as cereals, fruits and vegetables, olives, and tobacco from the interior to the coast for export. In the period under review here, the rural residents, by populating villages and hamlets, forming commercial and trading networks, and constructing roads bridges, canals, warehouses, workshops, mills, and so on, imposed a new geography on the Western Anatolian landscape. In his celebrated study of Chicago, Nature’s Metropolis, the American environmental historian William Cronon employed the terms “first nature” and “second nature” to explore how the Chicagoans defined and redefined the “natural” in the nineteenth century Although he was not the first to use these terms, acknowledging Marxist and Hegelian ideas, Cronon introduced them to a larger environmental history community. According to Cronon, “first nature” refers to primordial, pre-societal, original nature, while “second nature” is the artificial nature added to “first nature.” In Chicago, “first nature,” the original, pre-human nature, had created opportunities and prospects for the construction of “second nature,” the humanized landscape. “According 89

to their vision of what it should be,” people shaped and reshaped it and “a kind of second nature, designed by people and improved toward human ends” came into existence.220 In Western Anatolia, too, villagers who relied on these natural assets to sustain themselves, and those merchants who traded agricultural products, shaped the countryside for distinct ends. They formed a second nature on top of the first one, which together played a role in the conversion of the region’s natural resources to commodities. This chapter focuses on three major processes that brought about the change from a transit port-city to a gateway city and ended the economic and ecological separation of Izmir from its immediate countryside. The first one is demographic processes that shaped the size, composition, and distribution of population in the region. A steady growth of population due to natural increase, the continued influx of migrants and refugees, and the settlement of nomadic and semi-nomadic people stimulated economic activity based on agricultural production. The number of people involved in agricultural activity increased in the country, while the city’s expanding manufacturing and industrial sector created employment opportunities to urban populations. The second one is economic processes that brought about significant changes in perception, management, and use of natural resources and ensured the integration of city and countryside. The last one is technological processes and its central theme is the construction of railroads in Western Anatolia. Railroads fundamentally altered both urban and rural residents’ relation with space and perception of time and accelerated the flow of natural resources from the interior to the port. The extension of railroad lines from the coast to the interior, as we will see, broke down the historic boundary between city and country and brought the two spaces into closer contact after the 1860s. These three processes prompted rural residents to redefine their relationship with their surrounding environment and made them aware of the extent to which their lives could be 220

Cronon, 55-56.

90

affected by the ecosystems in their surroundings. Especially from the 1850s on, as Western Anatolians possessed the necessary capital, technology, and knowledge, they became more determined that they could manipulate first nature, overcome its limitations, exploit its opportunities, and form a second nature, i.e., railways, roads, bridges, canals, warehouses, workshops, mills, and so on, on top of the first. The merging of first and second nature was, as Cronon has proposed in the history of Chicago, “a shift from local ecosystem to regional hinterland and global economy.”221 This shift, enabled largely by the capitalist market economy, collapsed the distance between the city and countryside, faded the boundary between them, and created a unified space. In other words, increase in population as a result of migration and resettlement, expansion of commercial and trade networks, and construction of railroads produced important social, economic, and ecological changes in Western Anatolia in the nineteenth century. The model developed by Cronon can be used to analyze these changes and explore the manner in which people defined and redefined the “natural” in the nineteenth century Western Anatolia.

Demographic Processes: The Resettlement of Migrants, Nomads, and Refugees

From the sixteenth century on, Izmir had attracted merchants, intermediaries, bankers, agents, and brokers. The profitable trade of low-bulk, high-value articles such as spices, gems, silk, cotton, wool, and mohair yarn, as well as agricultural products and foodstuffs, such as figs, raisins, olive oil, and grains, drew many Europeans to Izmir. Dutch, French, Genoese, and Venetian merchants and sellers formed trading communities that played a significant role in the transfer of export products from the interior parts of Anatolia to European markets. Each community had its own consular representative, whose job was to facilitate business and

221

Ibid., 266.

91

provide legal protection to merchants in his consular jurisdiction. In addition to those involved in commerce with Europe, the city served as a magnet for migrants, exiles, refugees, laborers, artisans, contractors, and service workers within the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among the migrants to Izmir in search of opportunities and profits there were Jews from Salonica, who served as translators, customs house officials, and tax farmers; Armenians from Aleppo, Bursa, and Isfahan, who wanted to continue their profitable trade of silk; and Greeks from the Aegean islands, who formed their own small community and worked in a variety of occupations.222 Izmir, notwithstanding the various disasters and tragedies it experienced, was a considerable port-city at the turn of the nineteenth century. Its population, as mentioned above, reached the 100,000 mark before the close of the eighteenth century. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, Izmir continued to grow, but at the same time its population experienced fluctuations, which can mainly be associated with the epidemics and other stresses on human health. During the times of epidemics, major newspapers across Europe reported on the course of epidemics and often claimed that the Ottoman authorities were negligent for allowing the city to be in such condition.223 From 1839 through 1876, the Ottoman government introduced a wide-ranging set of changes known as the Tanzimat reforms.224 Among these reforms were significant improvements in sanitary conditions, medical care, and public health in urban areas. One of these changes, the establishment of quarantine organizations, contributed significantly to the eradication of pests

222

Zandi-Sayek, 11. For example, such articles appeared during the 1812 and the 1814 epidemics in Times (London) on Aug. 25, 1812; Sept. 14, 1812; Nov. 21, 1812; July 19, 1814; July 29, 1814; Aug. 25, 1814; Sept. 8, 1814; and Oct. 29, 1814; and during the 1836-37 epidemic in La Presse on July 23, 1836; July 16, 1837; Aug. 4, 1837; Aug. 6, 1837; Sept. 27, 1837; and May 3, 1838. 224 The literature on the Tanzimat reforms is huge. Major works on the subject include Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963); Halil İnalcık, “Tanzimat’ın Uygulanması ve Sosyal Tepkileri,” Belleten 28, no. 112 (1964): 660-71; Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993); and Carter Vaughn Findley, “The Tanzimat,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, Vol. 4, ed. Reşat Kasaba (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 11-37. 223

92

and diseases in Ottoman port-cities. The quarantine organization was established in Izmir in 1838 and was the second in the empire after Istanbul.225 Quarantine helped keep infectious travelers from entering Izmir and improved the standard of living in the city. When plague, the most disastrous of all epidemic diseases in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, nearly, if not completely, died out in the 1840s, and other diseases such as cholera and typhus came under strict control, the death rates declined automatically.226 In the same period, difficulty and hardship marked life in Western Anatolian towns and villages. For the scarce and scattered population life and death were intimately intertwined. With inadequate transportation and communication networks overland transportation of goods was relatively slow and costly. Even short distances between villages deterred most regional residents from visiting each other and kept them distinct from one another. Some exchange took place between villages -entrepreneurial villagers trading animals, food items, clothing, manufactures and hardware- but this trade was within the limits of a self-sufficient village economy. For Most Western Anatolians, the means of achieving better things were few and the risks great, so they tended to focus on coming to terms with their natural and social environments.227 However, some rural residents moved to the city for greater opportunities and, together with immigrants, refugees, and itinerant and seasonal from across the Mediterranean and other places, transformed Izmir into a densely populated city. In the nineteenth century, Izmir was prosperous and ever growing. Despite the losses caused by plague and other epidemics, a steady growth of population continued in the opening

225

Pelin Böke, “İzmir Karantina Teşkilatının Kuruluşu ve Faaliyetleri (1840-1900),” Çağdaş Türkiye Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi 8, no. 18-19 (Spring-Fall 2009): 137-59 and Rauf Beyru, 19. Yüzyılda İzmir’de Sağlık Sorunları ve Yaşam (Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2005), 25-26. 226 Death rates are cited in Chapter 2. 227 Even though European observers related the introverted life style of Western Anatolian farmers to oriental despotism, a kind of “subsistence ethic,” the idea of producing enough to feed the household animals and buying a few necessities from the nearby markets, existed in other parts of the world in the same period. See: James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 2.

93

decades of the century and the number of its inhabitants reached at least 140,000 in the 1840s (Table 1). There were problems and contemporary challenges in Izmir; yet, with the considerable rewards it offered, the city became a new home for those who took the risks and left their life in the country. Izmir attracted a large number of migrants from the countryside, from other cities in the empire, and from around the Mediterranean throughout the century. In this period, the factors that affect the motivation for migration, the so-called “push and pull factors,” became crucial in determining the migrants’ fate.228 Migrants flocked to Izmir in search of food, housing, and safety, bringing along cultural elements, clothing, accessories, and foodstuffs from their places of origin and integrating them into the urban culture to varying degrees. There is no information available about the origin, background, and economic status of these rural migrants, nor their motive for relocation, but it can be presumed that they were mostly young men, with most having craft and manufacturing skills, looking to provide services and find employment opportunities not available in the countryside. Most rural migrants were employed as low-paid and loweducated workers in different manufacturing industries such as tanning, cotton weaving, silk winding, oil pressing, and fig-packing, while a small portion of them made it to higher positions and better jobs. As people moved between the countryside and the city and labor, know-how, and money were exchanged between the rural and urban populations, migration and travel became a fact of life. Increased mobility and interaction helped to eradicate borders between the city and the countryside and connect residents in either space to each other.

228

The “push” and “pull” theory, put forth by Everett S. Lee in the 1960s, has been one of the most important theories in migration studies. Lee has argued that the “push” and “pull” factors, at the place of origin and the place of destination respectively, drive relocation over long distances and these factors are mostly economic. Everett S. Lee, “A Theory of Migration,” Demography 3, no. 3 (1966): 47-57.

94

Table 1: Izmir’s population in the 19th century

SOURCE Jean Baptiste Tavernier Joseph M. Tancoigne An Encyclopedia of Geography Charles Texier William Rae Wilson William Knight Godfrey Levinge Joseph August Reinelt John MacGregor John Murray Ludwig Ross Illustrated London News Luigi Storari George Rolleston Nassau W. Senior Bonaventura F. Slaars Carl von Scherzer Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın Vital Cuinet

DATE 1810 1812 1834 1837 1838 1839 1840 1844 1845 1850 1850 1853 1856 1857 1868 1872 1889 1894

POPULATION 90,000 106,000 100,000 – 120,000 130,000 100,000 140,000 150,000 140,000 130,000 – 150,000 150,000 150,000 180,000 132,000 150,000 150,000 187,000 155,000 207,548 229,615

Towards the mid-nineteenth century, in contrast to Izmir, where residents lived in dense housing, the population in the Western Anatolian countryside was still widely scattered. European observers, however, exaggerated the relatively low density of rural population and wrote as if the land was a primeval wilderness. For example, Richard William Brant, the British consul in Izmir, reported in 1841 that in the surrounding of the city there were “extensive tracts of land lying waste because there is nobody to cultivate them.”229 However, the situation was not as dramatic as Europeans described. In a country where the great majority of people lived in rural areas and the principal export items were agricultural products, it is a mistake to argue that the land was “lying waste” and that agriculture was in a state of crisis. The country was vast and agriculturally available land was so extensive that agricultural productivity was not adequate to generate widespread economic development and reduce the budget deficit. The Ottoman government defined this lack of productivity as a problem and sought ways to increase agricultural production by promoting migration and settlement, lifting restrictions on capital flow, and developing new means and techniques to 229

TNA, FO 78/442, “Brant to Foreign Office, London,” Dec. 6, 1841.

95

extend the amount of land under cultivation. Furthermore, the government brought diverse groups to Western Anatolia from other parts of the empire voluntarily or involuntarily and settled them in vakıf (pious foundation) villages. Most of these villages were found in marshlands or in previously unsettled locations and the government expected settlers to reclaim the land and to grow crops.230 For this purpose, the government exempted newcomers from paying taxes on their crops for a certain period of time. From the early nineteenth century on, as another way of stimulating agricultural production, the government started to divide the land freed from the control of local ayans into small parcels and reserve them for the use of landless peasants, rural migrants, and refugees.231 Despite the government’s efforts to settle migrants and promote agriculture, the amount of unclaimed land was large and there was still a lot of room to absorb newcomers in the mid-nineteenth century. In the first half of the nineteenth century the Aydın and Saruhan sancaks (districts) formed the economic hinterland of Izmir.232 Except for the guesstimates of European travelers, the 1831 census is the only available data source giving us information about the demography of these districts.233 According to the 1831 census, 107,678 people lived in the

230

Yücel Terzibaşoğlu, “Land Disputes and Ethno-Politics: Northwestern Anatolia, 1877-1912,” in EthnoNationality, Property Rights in Land and Territorial Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, ed. Stanley Engermann and Jacob Metzer (London: Routledge, 2004), 156. 231 Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 64. The ayans were local notables in Ottoman provinces, who exerted political, military, and economic control over large territories. The most influential ayan family in Western Anatolia was the Karaosmanoğlu family. Their political and economic power was curtailed drastically by the policies of centralization during the reign of Mahmud II. The government did not allow the property of a deceased person to pass to his heirs. As a result, the family had to sell off its çiftliks (farms) in Mihaili (1816), Selimşahlar (1841), Tekeliler (1844), and Birunören (1862). Yuzo Nagata, Tarihte Ayanlar. Karaosmanoğulları Üzerine Bir İnceleme (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1997), 53. 232 In 1833, Aydın gained a vilayet (province) status. Saruhan became a sancak within the jurisdiction of the Aydın Vilayet in that year and a separate vilayet with a provincial center in Manisa in 1845. For the general history of the Aydın Vilayet, see: Asaf Gökbel and Hikmet Şahin, Aydın İli Tarihi (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1936); Olcay Pullukçuoğlu Yapucu, Modernleşme Sürecinde Bir Sancak: Aydın (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2007); Günver Güneş, Tarihsel Süreçte Aydın (Aydın: Aydın Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2012); and of the Saruhan Vilayet, see: Kemal Irmak, Manisa Tarihi (Istanbul, Ülkü Basımevi, 1937) and Çağ atay Uluçay, Manisa Tarihi (Istanbul: Resimli Ay Matbaası, 1939). 233 The 1831 census was the first official census in the Ottoman Empire. It was a part of Mahmud II’s plan to find out the number of draftable males for a new army after the abolition of the janissary corps in 1826. Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda İlk Nüfus Sayımı (Ankara: Başvekalet İstatistik Umum Müdürlüğü, 1943).

96

Aydın Sancak, while the population of the Saruhan Sancak was 98,789.234 Aydın (Güzelhisar) and Manisa were the largest cities in these districts. The population of Manisa was recorded as 12,884 in the census of 1835 and 11,630 in 1842.235 With a population of 12,131, Aydın was about the same size as Manisa.236 In these two sancaks, thirty to forty per cent of the population was concentrated in specialized centers with manufacturing activities. Because these manufacturing activities were closely related to agricultural production, country and manufacturing towns naturally interacted with one another.237 In centers with important regional and local markets, such as Akhisar, Alaşehir, Tire, Ödemiş, and Nazilli, a large portion of inhabitants engaged in occupations pertaining to agriculture. Studies based on the temettuat defterleri238 have demonstrated that twenty-three per cent of inhabitants in Aydın and twenty-seven per cent in Nazilli had occupations and activities related directly to agricultural work and, for instance, were registered as erbab-ı ziraat (agriculturalists), rençber (peasants), çiftçi (farmers), ortakçı (sharecroppers), bahçevan (gardeners), hademe (servants), and ırgat (farm laborers). The ratio increases to twenty eight per cent in Manisa, thirty-eight per cent in Ödemiş, fifty seven per cent in Beydağ, and eighty-five per cent in Sultanhisar.239 If we consider the variety of occupations pertaining to the production of food, drinks, and

234

Karpat, Ottoman Population, 111. Nejdet Bilgi, “Tanzimât’ın Öncesinde ve Sonrasında Saruhan Sancağı’nda Nüfus,” in Prof. Dr. İsmail Aka Armağanı, ed. Özer Küpeli (Izmir: Beta, 1999), 255 and idem, “1842 Yılında Saruhan Sancağı’nın Nüfusu ve İdari Bölünüşü,” in Manisa Araştırmaları 1 (2001): 94. 236 Karpat, Ottoman Population, 111. 237 Ayvalık and Edremit (olive oil), Bergama and Akhisar (cotton), Alaşehir (raisins), Aydın (figs), and Manisa (silk weaving) can be listed among the specialized manufacturing towns in Western Anatolia. 238 The temettuat defterleri (property registers) were compiled during the tax surveys between 1840 and 1845 and contain information about the demographic, economic, social, fiscal, and agricultural structure of the Ottoman Empire. For further information on the temettuat defterleri, see: Said Öztürk, “Türkiye’de Temettuat Çalışmaları,” Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatur Dergisi 1, no. 1 (2003): 287-304; Hayashi Kayako and Mahir Aydın, eds., The Ottoman State and Societies in Change: A Study of the Nineteenth Century Temettuat Registers (London: Kegan Paul, 2004); and Coşkun Çakır, “Temettuat,” in Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Gabor Agoston and Bruce Masters (New York: Facts on File, 2008), 558-59. 239 Tevfik Güran, “Ondokuzuncu Yüzyıl Ortalarında Ödemiş Kasabasının Sosyo-Ekonomik Özellikleri,” İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 41, no. 1-4 (1985): 304; Arzu Tozduman, “Aydın Güzelhisarı’nın Sosyal ve İktisadi Durumu,” (Istanbul: Istanbul University M.A. Thesis, 1992), 46; Hilal Ortaç, Olcay Yapucu, and Cihan Özgün, eds., Değişim Sürecinde Aydın: XIX. Yüzyıldan Günümüze Sosyal ve Ekonomik Hayatın Dönüşümü (Aydın: Aydın Ticaret Odası, 2010), 29-45, 52-56, and 87-105; and Cihan Özgün, “Batı Anadolu’da Tarımsal İşgücü ve Ücretler (1844-1914),” Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi 5, no. 22 (Summer 2012): 320-21. 235

97

clothing, manufacturing and weaving of textiles, and packaging and marketing of goods in these manufacturing towns, we can argue that artisans and tradesmen retained strong ties to rural farms.240

Sedenterization of Nomads

In the interaction between manufacturing towns and country, nomads and seminomads, played a significant role. The sedentarization of nomads, an important and integral part of Ottoman society, was closely related to the government’s campaign to encourage settlement in the thinly populated Western Anatolian lands. As mentioned briefly in the previous chapter, nomads were primarily pastoral people. The government had brought the majority of them to Western Anatolia from the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire as part of a continuous resettlement campaign.241 From the 1690s on, the authorities had transplanted tribes originating from the vast region between Aleppo and Adana, such as Büyük Sermayelü, Küçük Sermayelü, Karalu, Cevanşir, Kaşıkcı, Gölegir, Mihmadlu, Gölegir, Büyük Süleymanlı, Küçük Süleymanlı, Gördüngöre, Karamanlı Mocan, in different parts of the region. During the course of the eighteenth century, each tribe became fragmented and settled in different parts of the empire. For example, the authorities transferred some members of the Kurdish Mihmadlu tribe to the surrounding areas of Kuşadası, Manisa, and Izmir in 1713.242 The Western Anatolian landscape with mountains and valleys, lakes and rivers, was ideally suited to nomadic life. In the summer, nomads stretched to the hills and mountains nearby, while in the wintertime they descended to lowlands and searched out warmer pastures 240

For example, Arzu Terzi, in her study on mid-nineteenth century Aydın, has listed more than a hundred different occupations, a large number of which were, directly or indirectly, related to the production, processing, and marketing of agricultural goods. Arzu Terzi, “Güzelhisar-ı Aydın: Portrait of a Western Anatolian Town,” in The Ottoman State and Societies, 141-71. 241 Yusuf Halaçoğlu, XVIII. Yüzyılda Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda İskân Siyaseti ve Aşiretlerin Yerleştirilmesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1988), 125-26. 242 Cengiz Orhonlu, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Aşiretlerin İskanı, (Istanbul: Eren, 1987), 69-70.

98

to graze their animals. Contrary to the commonly held belief among European visitors that the nomads wandered aimlessly around, most of the nomads followed the same pattern of migration every year and used winter and summer pastures Ottoman authorities assigned to them. Nomads, because of their migratory character, had probably a better understanding of nature than the settled populations. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, nomads, for social and economic reasons, frequently demonstrated resistance to the government’s efforts to sedentarize them. They might have thought that their freedom could be more tightly restricted as landed peasants or cottagers than as herders. It is also possible to think that they were unwilling to put themselves under the control of the government for fear that their taxes would be higher or young members of the tribe would be conscripted, which altogether would worsen their income and standard of living. Nomads’ relation to villagers and townsmen varied, depending on their organization, number, interests, and norms. Some occasionally visited local markets, but others lived in isolation from settled people and other nomadic groups. In general, however, nomads were very useful for town-dwellers, for they provided a variety of products consumed in cities and towns, from meat to milk and cheese and from animal fibers to other leather goods such as sheep’s wool, camel hair, goat skin, and mohair. Furthermore, nomads offered goods and services at regular intervals to the peasant villages nearby, safeguarded commerce and provided traveling merchants with their animals along the routes in Western Anatolia. At the same time, villagers and townsmen were useful to nomads since they provided necessities such as hardware, utensils, grain, fruits, and vegetables. In other words, nomads and agricultural-based townspeople often shared the same environmental space and relied on each other in both economic and ecological ways. Francis Arundell noted items ready for barter in a weekly market in Salihli as follows: There were the necessaries, and even luxuries of life. There were shoes and toe-turned slippers, black and red; turban shawls and skull-caps; horse and ass 99

shoes, for camels wear none; travelling benishes and tailors’ needles; blue beads for camel’s necks; toilet-looking glasses, and gum mastic; large assortment of cordage and palank tackle; and in earthen ware; choice varieties of stamnas and dedjarès and goumaries.243 According to the 1831 census, almost ten per cent of the total population lived as nomads or semi-nomads in the Aydın Sancak and nine per cent in Saruhan.244 This ratio increased substantially with the arrival of new nomadic groups from the central and eastern part of Anatolia to these sancaks. In the research conducted by the British consul in Izmir in 1860, the population of the Aydın Vilayet (Province) was 280,000 people, of which 110,000 were “migratory.”245 In the provincial salnâme (annual register) of 1882, the Aydın Vilayet had a total population of 1,396,000 and the number of nomads arriving in the vilayet at different times was given as about 200,000 people.246 From the early nineteenth century on, in addition to their day-to-day herding practice, nomads intensified their agricultural activities and adopted a semi-nomadic or quasi-sedentary life. At the beginning, their efforts at sedentary life were restricted to the land adjacent to their winter camps and were very limited in scale. Later, however, they formed periodic settlements called mezras. The boundaries between the peasants and nomads were fuzzy and the joint use of land took place where exclusive claims were ambiguous. With the settlement of Greek and later Crimean and Caucasian immigrants and refugees, as we will see in the following, the number of nomadic people claiming rights on land and resources grew. The competition over land and resources triggered sedentarization of nomadic populations and expansion of agricultural land use.247 In other words, the government used the immigrants, especially those expelled from the Russian Empire, “as a means of bolstering its sedentarization program and as an excuse for building new and powerful institutions to 243

Arundell, 33. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 111. 245 TNA, FO 78/1533, “Blunt to Foreign Office, London,” July 28, 1860. 246 Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın, (Aydın: Vilayet Matbaası, 1882). 247 Terzibaşoğlu, “Landlords, Nomads, and Refugees,” 26. 244

100

control its population.”248 Accordingly, it converted the mezras into permanent villages in the second half of the nineteenth century, although the nomads continued to have themselves recorded as “migratory” people to evade tax obligations. The ratio of itinerants registered as yürük or göçebe (both meaning ‘mobile tribe’) in the total population increased incredibly in a few decades, yet the question of how many of them were really nomadic people is difficult to answer. In the 1831 census, 10,313 people were recorded as “tribes” in the Aydın Sancak and a total of 21,805 people were recorded as “nomads” or “nomadic tribes” in Saruhan.249 However, these numbers should be carefully interpreted because, as Donald Quataert stated, the government “counted the wealth of its subjects but not the people themselves,” and recorded only taxpayer male adults in the 1831 census.250 Furthermore, it is probable that many Western Anatolians may have been out of sight during the census in order to evade conscription. No matter how inadequate the figures are, the 1831 census is valuable in the sense that it helps us to understand the reality that a great portion of population was scattered over a large area in the countryside, inhabiting manufacturing towns as well as much smaller and remoter villages and hamlets. Nomadic life required adaptation to, rather than manipulation of, the natural environment. Thanks to their complex ways of accommodation, nomadic groups, unlike settled communities, were able to survive in their habitats with a minimum of interference with them. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, the campaigns to sedentarize nomadic groups, therefore, had not only a social and economic, but also a major and permanent impact on the natural environment. In this period, Western Anatolia achieved some notable increase in agricultural production because of “more frequent cultivation of previously less cultivated

248

Reşat Kasaba, Migrants and Refugees in the Ottoman Empire (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), 109. 249 Karpat, Ottoman Population, 111. 250 Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 111.

101

lands and the opening of marshes and forests.”251 Moreover, increases in the number and density of the rural population in Western Anatolia strengthened nomads’ claims on the land against competing claims and forced them “to turn communal pastures and periodically-used fields into permanent settlements.”252 Villages that came into existence as a result of the sedentarization of nomads in the nineteenth century still exist today. Some of them bear the names of the nomadic groups or tribes that founded them. The Gencelli village in Aydın, which was founded by the nomads from the Azerbaijani city of Gence, is such an example. On the other hand, sedentarized nomads found some mezraas and villages in Western Anatolia and named them after the crops they grow in these places, such as Zeytinköy (olive village), Pamukören (cotton weaver), Kirazlı (cherry village), and Baklaköy (horsebean village). The period between the 1840s and 1860s seemed to mark the beginning of a revival in the fortunes of agricultural production in Western Anatolia. This revival was the concomitant development of processes of migration, sedentarization, and acquisition of land. In this period, Western Anatolia became a more densely populated and thriving region. In the countryside, nomads and migrants built villages from scratch and opened new lands to cultivation. At the same time, the countryside impressed certain urban residents who were on the lookout for opportunities to invest their capital. These urban entrepreneurs were aware of the agricultural potential of the region and encouraged by the increasing demand for cash crops and raw materials in European markets. They were also acquainted with the reality that agricultural potential itself did not have any meaning and that production for the market could be achieved if humans could apply more intensive labor, deploy more capital, and develop transportation and communication networks.

251 252

Terzibaşoğlu, “Landlords, Nomads, and Refugees,” 35. Ibid., 39.

102

Immigrants and Refugees from Greece

The ability of migration to reduce distances and eliminate borders has already been mentioned. In the nineteenth century, waves of immigrants came to Western Anatolia to improve their lives, and at the same time, to contribute to the economic growth and the making of a metropolitan culture in Izmir. One event, the Greek War of Independence between 1821 and 1829, was particularly important in terms of migration to Izmir. During the years of the war, the city experienced a flow of Muslim war refugees from the Morea. The number of Muslims arriving in Izmir particularly increased after the Ottomans conceded the establishment of a Greek state in 1830 and the evacuation of Muslims from the Morea within a period of six months.253 After this date, the authorities brought Morean Muslims to the Ottoman Empire and settled them in Istanbul, as well as the western and northwestern parts of Anatolia. Due to lack of records, it is difficult to determine how many immigrants and refugees arrived in Izmir during the war, but it appears that the number of Muslims taking refuge in the city was large enough to create housing problems.254 The government made every effort to settle the Morean Muslims; it arranged employment for those who were skilled and provided aid to orphans and the needy among them.255 In addition to Morean Muslims, Greek Orthodox migrants, who had migrated from Western Anatolia to the Aegean islands for economic reasons, or for fear of persecution, Greek Orthodox immigrants, in response to economic development, increased security, and the general improvement in living conditions, started returning to their homes and farmlands after the war. As a result, the number of Greek Orthodox inhabitants in the city steadily increased in the 1830s. The Tanzimat Fermanı (The 253

Ahmet Cevat Eren, Türkiye’de Göç ve Göçmen Meseleleri (Istanbul: Nurgök Matbaası, 1966), 35-37. For a more recent and comprehensive study on the forced expulsion of Muslims from Morea, see: Ali Fuat Örenç, Balkanlarda İlk Dram: Unuttuğumuz Mora Türkleri ve Eyaletten Bağımsızlığa Yunanistan (Istanbul: Babıali Kü ltü r Yayıncılığ ı, 2009). 254 Nedim İpek, “Türk-Yunan Nüfus Meselesi,” in XII. Türk Tarih Kongresi, Ankara 4-8 Ekim 1999 Kongre’ye Sunulan Bildiriler, Vol. 3, p. 1 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2002), 472-75. 255 BOA, HAT 489/23988, Sept. 3, 1830.

103

Imperial Edict of Reorganization) of 1839, which put an end to all discrimination against nonMuslims legally, acknowledged their legal status, and guaranteed the protection of their life, family, honor, and property, fueled the process of return migration. As a result, the Greek population in Izmir increased significantly in the mid-nineteenth century and the ethnic composition of the city gradually altered in favor of the Greek-Orthodox. Greek workers and artisans in Izmir were organized in guilds; members of each guild were mostly from the same village, town, or island. For example, in the 1830s, barrel makers were exclusively from Naxos, while almost all shoemakers came from Tinos, sailors from Delos, Tripoli, and Naxos, tanners  from Chios, and tinkers from Euboea.256 The increase in Izmir’s population due to streams of Greek Orthodoxmigrants coming from Greece and elsewhere resulted in the overall improvement of urban environmental quality. For decades, urban dwellers had resided in close proximity within the limits of the existing city. However, from the 1830s on, they built new houses in suburban areas and formed new residential neighborhoods at the cost of orchards and vineyards.257 The catastrophic fire in 1845 had a profound impact on urban environmental health conditions. In the years following the fire, building activities increased considerably with the clearing away of debris and the opening of new building allotments. Despite the accelerated urban growth and construction of new residential and industrial areas in the second half of the nineteenth century, the risk of epidemics was reduced as the urban authorities introduced sanitary measures and regarded the draining of marshes, swamps, and standing water in the lower sections of the city as a priority. Unlike Western European cities, which absorbed waves of migrants seeking employment in industrial establishments, however, the unprecedented increase in rural-urban migration in Western Anatolia was in response to the increased

256

Panagiotis Kamilakis, “Συντεχνίες και επαγγέλµατα στη Σµύρνη πριν από τα µέσα του 19ου αιώνα, µε βάση αρχειακές κυρίως πηγές,” Mikrasiatika Chronika 20 (1998): 191-93. 257 Zandi-Sayek, 25.

104

employment opportunities in the commercial and services sectors, as well as in manufacturing.258 The influx of Greek Orthodox immigrants and their social, economic, and environmental impact was not restricted to Izmir. The demography of settlements all along the Western Anatolian littoral was affected positively by the arrival of immigrants not only from mainland Greece, but also from farther places, such as Cappadocia, Cyprus, or Crete. In many places, landowners particularly preferred large immigrant families from faraway places and hired them as harvest workers, farmers, or fruit pickers in their lands, or as servants in their houses. On the other hand, some employment avenues were open to young men only, and therefore, not everybody from faraway places was able to bring his family.259 Immigrants coming from the Morea and the Aegean Islands were mostly the people who had migrated to these areas from Western Anatolia right after Greek independence, but then returned to their places of origin for economic reasons. High unemployment in the newly established Greek state constituted a strong push factor, although some of the Greek immigrants faced the same problem as they crowded into the already overpopulated cities of Western Anatolia such as Foça, Ayvalık, and Çeşme. Those who were unable to find employment in these coastal towns settled further inland in towns and villages along the fertile river valleys.260 For example, in 1842 the Greeks made up nearly twenty-two per cent of total population of Manisa.261 In Aydın, the population in the years 1844-45 was about 17,800 people, and the Greeks made up fifteen percent of it.262 The Greeks in Western

258

Ibid., 66-67. For example, between 1836 and 1842, those who were employed as menial workers near Sobice (Sobuca) in the Menteşe Vilayet were only young men from Crete and Cyprus. BOA, ML.CRD Reg. no. 1064 (1845). 260 For example, within the jurisdiction of Manisa in the 1850s, there were Greek immigrants referred to as Moralı (Morean) in government documents. BOA, A.DVN 109/43, Nov. 10, 1855 and BOA, DH.SAİD 64/205, Aug. 1857. Moreover, there are villages founded by the Greek immigrants from Morea, such as those called “Moralılar” in Manisa and “Moralı” in Aydın. 261 Bilgi, “1842 Yılında Saruhan Sancağı’nın,” 94. 262 Terzi, 145. 259

105

Anatolian cities and towns played an intermediary role in the flow of goods from the countryside to the city and vice versa and contributed to cultural and economic life. Furthermore, they employed agricultural know-how they brought with them to their new lands and played an important role in the late nineteenth century ecological shifts in Western Anatolia that will be analyzed in the next chapter.

Immigrants and Refugees from Circassia and Crimea

Migration in the aftermath of the Greek War of Independence was an important occurrence, but it did not change the region’s demographic, social, and economic fundamentals alone. The increase in population in Western Anatolia in the mid-nineteenth century resulted from a combination of events and processes, and the return of Greek Orthodox and influx of Morean Muslim war refugees were only two of them. A much more important occurrence in terms of demographic, social, and economic change in the countryside was the mass migration of Crimean Tatars and Circassians from the Russian Empire into Ottoman territories during and after the Crimean War of 1853-56.263 The migration and settlement of the Tatars and Circassians had a great impact on the social and economic composition of the Ottoman Empire.264 Although Western Anatolia was not a primary destination for Crimean and Circassian migrants, it was affected significantly from their immigration en masse. The environmental consequences of the migration of Crimeans 263

The term “Circassian” refers to various ethnic and linguistic groups such as Abkhaz, Adyghe, Balkar, Besleney, Chechen, Ingush, Karachay, and Dagestani from Northern and Southern Caucasia. 264 There is a considerable number of studies about the forced migration of the Crimean and Circassian people; Mark Pinson, “Russian Policy and the Emigration of the Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire, 1854-1862,” Güneydoğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi 1 (1972): 38-63; Üner Turgay, “Circassian Emigration into the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1878,” in Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, ed. Wael B. Hallaq and Donald P. Little (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 193-217; Bedri Habiçoğlu, Kafkasya’dan Anadolu’ya Göçler (Istanbul: Nart Yayıncılık, 1993); Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995); Abdullah Saydam, Kırım ve Kafkas Göçleri 1856-1876 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1997); Muhittin Ünal, Çerkeslerin Sürgünü (Ankara: Kafder Yayınları, 2001); and Jülide Akyüz Orat, Nebahat Oran Arslan, and Mustafa Tanrıverdi, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Kafkas Göçleri (1828-1943) (Kars: Kafkas Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2011).

106

and Circassians, who emigrated from different environmental and climatic zones and brought their diverse experience, were much greater than in the case of the Greeks, who in contrast came from regions having ecosystems similar to Western Anatolia. Circassians and Crimeans from across the Black Sea basin brought with them a rich, diverse experience to transform agriculture in Western Anatolia. During the years of the Crimean War, fear of persecution or exile to distant places within the Russian Empire, as well as Russification policies, triggered the emigration of Muslims living in the Crimea and the Caucasus into the Ottoman Empire.265 The number of Muslims who fled the Russian Empire following the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853 has been estimated as high as 900,000. Of these emigrants and refugees, one-third was thought to have come from the Crimean peninsula and two-thirds from northern and western Caucasia.266 The mass migration of Muslims from Russia continued after the war, especially when forced migration and exile became state policy in Crimea after 1856 and in Circassia after 1862/63.267 When the Caucasus came under Russian rule, it became clear that there was not much living space left for the Circassians there. According to a report published in Takvim-i Vekayi in 1864, 595,000 people left Crimea and the Caucasus for the Ottoman Empire between 1855 and July 1864.268 The arrival of Crimean and Caucasian emigrants fitted the government’s agenda of promoting the settlement of immigrants and agricultural development geared to global markets. In other words, the government hoped to address the agricultural labor shortage by 265

Kemal Karpat, “Population Movements in the Ottoman State in the 19th Century: An Outline,” Collection Turcica 3 (1983): 401. 266 Alan W. Fisher, “Emigration of Muslims from the Russian Empire in the Years after the Crimean War,” in A Precarious Balance: Conflict, Trade, and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier, ed. Alan W. Fisher (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 1999), 171. It is beyond the purpose of this study to discuss the exact number of Crimean and Circassian emigrants to the Ottoman Empire, but it should be noted there is no consensus among historians on the approximate number of emigrants. Estimates vary greatly from 700,000 to 2,000,000 people. 267 Karpat, “Population Movements,” 401-2. 268 Takvim-i Vekayi, Sept. 7, 1864. Kemal Karpat has claimed that in the spring of 1864 alone, 400,000 Circassians were forced to migrate to the Ottoman Empire (Ottoman Population, 67).

107

settling the immigrants and war refugees in different parts of the empire.269 A decree issued on May 3, 1856, defined initiatives and policies for the mobility and settlement of Crimean immigrants. According to this decree, the Ottoman government welcomed all emigrants and war refugees regardless of their religion and ethnicity and undertook a major effort to offer them temporary housing until their final settlement, provide financial support to cover expenses concerning their travel and settlement, and promote agricultural production locally by distributing wheat and rye seeds. Moreover, the government promised to grant tax exemptions to settlers who cultivated the land for a certain period of time.270 On March 9, 1857, the High Council of the Tanzimat issued another decree on migration and settlement. With this decree, the Ottoman government abolished restrictions on migration to the empire and gave permission to settle in Ottoman provinces to anybody who was “willing to give his allegiance to the Sultan, become his subject, and respect the country’s laws.”271 According to the 1857 decree, furthermore, the settlers would obtain arable land for free, but they could not sell it for twenty years. Those, who chose to settle in the European provinces, would be exempted from military service and taxes for six years, and in the less-populated Anatolian and Arab provinces for twelve years.272 On January 5, 1860, the government founded the Muhacirin Komisyonu, a commission to register, monitor, and execute the settlement of incoming emigrants and refugees from the Crimea and the Caucasus.273 The Sultan’s call for immigration to the Ottoman Empire had a certain international echo, reaching as far as the United States. Newspapers such as the New York Times gave information about migration to the Ottoman Empire, a country that had previously been considered hardly worth settling.274

269

Karpat, Ottoman Population, 67. BOA, DH.İD 22622, May 3, 1856 and BOA, A.MKT.MHM, 373 / 86, Feb. 9, 1867. 271 Karpat, Ottoman Population, 62. 272 Ibid.; idem, “Population Movements,” 392; and Quataert, “The Age of Reforms,” 193-94. 273 Eren, 55-61 and 96-116. For a comprehensive study on the Muhacirin Komisyonu, see: David Cameron Cuthell Jr., “The Muhacirin Komisyonu: An Agent in the Transformation of the Ottoman Anatolia (1860– 1866),” (New York: Columbia University Ph.D. Diss, 2005). 274 “The Sultan Turned Emigrant-Runner,” New York Times, Mar. 26, 1858. 270

108

Western Anatolia, because of its empty lands and fertile soils, was suitable for the settlement of emigrants from the Crimea and Caucasia. The authorities hoped these emigrants would help them solve the “labor shortage” problem in the region. There are numerous documents in the Prime Ministry’s Ottoman Archive in Istanbul regarding the settlement and integration of emigrants from the Crimea and Caucasia.275 For example, in August 1860 authorities in Istanbul sent a notice to the local authorities in Izmir and requested them to take care of two hundred out of a total of 1,700 emigrant families from Crimea, which had been recently transferred from Istanbul to the region.276 In another document from 1860, the resettlement of 1,266 emigrants from Dagestan and Chechnya in different villages within the jurisdiction of Saruhan Vilayet is mentioned.277 In the same year, the authorities in the Aydın Vilayet wrote a letter to the central government and informed it about the settlement of 1,300 Chechens in different parts of the province.278 The mobilization and settlement of immigrant families and groups were carefully planned and monitored from Istanbul. In the process of resettlement, the government dealt with those who had problems with adaptation or finding jobs and even helped them to construct their houses.279 To facilitate immigrants’ settlement in rural parts of Western Anatolia, the government also granted land and seed. For instance, in 1861, the authorities brought eighty-seven families to the Ballıca district near Palamut village in Saruhan Vilayet and gave them a total of 741 acres of land.280 The government’s efforts to settle Crimean and Circassian immigrants also appear in the reports of European consuls in

275

BOA, A.MKT.NZD 170/10, Nov. 6, 1855; BOA, MVL 348/21, Dec. 17, 1855; BOA, A.MKT.UM 438/59, Nov. 27, 1860; BOA, A.MKT.UM 443/42, Dec. 19, 1860; BOA, İ.MVL 456/20465, Nov. 10, 1861; and BOA, A.MKT.NZD 389/43, Jan. 1, 1862. 276 BOA, A.MKT.UM 420/27, Aug. 13, 1860 and BOA, A.MKT.UM 420/46, Aug. 13, 1860. 277 BOA, A.MKT.UM 438/59, Dec. 27, 1860. For a detailed study on the emigrants from the Caucasus and Crimea to the Saruhan Vilayet, see: Muzaffer Tepekaya, “19. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Kırım ve Kafkasya’dan Göç Hareketleri ve Saruhan (Manisa) Sancağı’na Göçler,” Türk Dünyası İncelemeleri Dergisi 6, no. 2 (2006): 463-80. 278 BOA, A.MKT.NZD 327/23, Nov. 13, 1860. 279 For example, the government constructed 350 houses for the immigrants and carried out another project to build 50 more houses in the center of Manisa in 1863. BOA, İ.DH 513/34921, Sept. 2, 1863 and BOA, A.MKT.MHM 277/8, Sept. 15, 1863. 280 BOA, A.MKT.UM 456/7-3, Feb. 16, 1861.

109

Izmir. For example, in 1864, the British consul in Izmir reported the arrival of about four thousand Circassian immigrants.281 The sudden arrival of emigrants in Western Anatolia led to some problems between the locals and newcomers regarding the use of land and natural resources in rural areas. The provincial administration worked diligently to overcome these problems, for example, by forming councils and preparing regulations.282 As a result, Crimean and Circassian migration produced positive results in the expansion of economic production based on agriculture in the region. The Tatars from the Crimea fitted in with their new environment and got along with the locals better than those who came from the Caucasus, because the Turkish language was fairly comprehensible for the Tatars.283 Furthermore, because of similarities in soil and climate between their home and new environments, they were able to transfer their environmental knowledge to their new environments. Especially those coming from the coastal villages on the Black Sea did not encounter any problem in adapting to the sandy soil and humid climate of Western Anatolian and continued to grow fruits and vegetables as they did in the Crimea and the Caucasus. In addition to these products, settlers’ economic activity included grain and tobacco cultivation and cattle raising.284 In the mid-nineteenth century, Western Anatolia also attracted migrants who sought employment on a seasonal basis. Especially in years when the cotton picking and fruit harvest promised to be plentiful, migrant labor was utilized. In such circumstances, the main sources of migrant labor were the Aegean islands and the nearby regions in the direction of the

281

TNA, FO 195/288, Sept. 29, 1864. Adil Adnan Öztürk, “Rumeli’den Aydın Vilâyeti’ne Yapılan Göçler ve Aydın Vilâyeti’ne Gelen Rumeli Muhacîrinin İskân ve İdâreleri Hakkında Talimat-ı Mahsusa,” Çağdaş Türkiye Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi 3, no. 9 (1999-2000): 123-31. 283 Hakan Kırımlı, “Kırım’dan Türkiye’ye Kırım Tatar Göçleri,” in Uluslararası Göç Sempozyumu Bildirileri, (Istanbul: Zeytinburnu Belediyesi, 2006), 151. 284 Andrew Neilson, The Crimea: Its Towns, Inhabitants, and Social Customs (London: Partridge, Oakey, and Co.; Edinburgh: Shepherd and Elliott, 1855), 121-23. 282

110

Anatolian plateau.285 Whether some seasonal migrants stayed on longer than they originally intended or not is unknown. However, given the creation of employment opportunities in agriculture and the increase in wages, it is highly probable that some decided to establish a semi-permanent or permanent residence in Western Anatolia. In Izmir, on the other hand, labor shortage occurred particularly due to the growth of trade and commerce. The solution to scarcity of labor was Greeks from the nearby Aegean islands, who were employed at the docks or in the warehouses. As the city’s commercial functions grew, they settled more permanently and formed new neighborhoods in the outskirts of the city.286

Commercial Processes: The Emergence of a Market Economy and Trade Networks

In its classical period, the Ottoman government had strict control over the economy and it successfully prevented European merchants from gaining an unacceptable level of economic influence on Ottoman territories. Ottoman rulers believed the empire would face some significant limitations on its control over trade and manufacturing if they moved from a protectionist to a freer economic system. According to the Turkish economic historian Mehmet Genç, there were three pillars of this economic policy. The first pillar was “provisionism.” He has argued that the Ottoman state was mainly concerned with the “maintenance of a steady supply so that all goods and services were cheap, plentiful, and of good quality. With respect to foreign trade, provisionism sought to keep the supply of goods and services to the internal market at an optimal level.” It was the responsibility of the government to provide food for its citizens in cities and towns so that the urban classes could 285

TNA, FO 83/334, “Cumberbatch to Elliot,” Dec. 3, 1869 and Christopher Clay, “Labour Migration and Economic Conditions in Nineteenth-Century Anatolia,” Middle Eastern Studies 34, no. 4 (Oct. 1998): 12. On labor migration in Western Anatolia, see also: Reşat Kasaba, “Migrant Labor in Western Anatolia,” in Landholding and Commercial Agriculture, 319-31. 286 Zandi-Sayek, 66-67.

111

concentrate on manufacturing and trade. In this respect, exports were “curtailed through prohibitions, quotas, and taxes” to ensure an adequate supply of foodstuffs and fibers for the domestic market, whereas imports were “fostered and facilitated.” The second pillar, “traditionalism,” was the “tendency to preserve the existing conditions, and look to the past for models instead of searching for a new equilibrium when changes occurred.” The final pillar was fiscalism, which can be summarized as the “maximization of treasury income and the effort to prevent it from falling below already-attained levels.”287 During the course of the eighteenth century, however, things started to change as a result of the emergence of global economic systems that drew on environmental resources. The Industrial Revolution transformed agricultural economies into industrial ones, first in Britain and later in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and the high level of consumption in urban areas stimulated the demand for food. In industrializing Europe, cities “grew to such an extent that they could not easily be supplied with food from their immediate hinterlands.”288 Therefore, cities sought markets to sell manufactured goods on one hand, and on the other hand, they competed for the control of new areas to feed their growing urban populations. In other words, the increased demand for agricultural goods and raw materials in the industrializing Western Europe, as well as the search to establish markets for their cheap manufactures exerted a strong pull on the non-industrial parts of Europe, including the Ottoman Empire. Not only merchants, but also smugglers, speculators, and profiteers in Ottoman lands took the advantage of the situation and reoriented their commercial activities toward European markets. During this period of economic and commercial boom, low-priced European manufactures, especially English cotton goods, found their way to Ottoman

287

Mehmet Genç, “Ottoman Industry in the Eighteenth Century: General Framework, Characteristics, and Main Trends,” in Manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, 1500-1900, ed. Donald Quataert (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 60. 288 Peter Sluglett, “Introduction,” in The Urban Social History of the Middle East, 1750-1950, ed. Peter Sluglett (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 11.

112

markets, while agricultural goods and raw materials found their way abroad. Moreover, the dissolution of the Levant Company in 1825 critically contributed to the ongoing commercial expansion of Britain in the Ottoman Empire. The abolition of the Company’s monopoly in Ottoman territories removed restrictions on trade and allowed British merchants to operate independently in the Eastern Mediterranean. In this relatively peaceful period in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, called also Pax Britannica, Britain came to play a larger role, replacing France as the Ottoman Empire’s major trading partner. The first steamships arrived in Ottoman ports in the 1830s and thereafter steamships bearing the British flag regularly plied the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, bringing independent merchants, dealers, and intermediaries to port-cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, Alexandria, and Beirut.289 In the first half of the nineteenth century, commerce with Britain was the driving force behind the city’s evolution into the most prominent city of the Ottoman Empire. According to one estimate, imports of the Ottoman Empire from Britain doubled between 1827 and 1838.290 In the booming years of the world economy centered in London, the expanding world economy formed a pull factor and the Ottoman government’s efforts to stay away from competition proved fruitless. However, it is not realistic to claim that Izmir’s transformation into a Mediterranean metropolis was solely external and the situation was beyond the Ottoman government’s control. Internal factors were also important and the political, social, and economic developments within the empire and their far-reaching impact on the natural environment should not be overlooked. In the 1830s, a new period started in the Ottoman Empire, which can be defined in terms of political centralization and economic liberalization. On one hand, the political power of the central government increased; on the other, the government shifted its economic policy from a state-controlled to a free market economy. 289

David M. Williams, “Trading Links: Patterns of Information and Communication: The Steamship and the Modernization of the East-West Commerce,” in East Meets West. Banking, Commerce, and Investment in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Philip L. Cotrell, Monika Pohle, and Iain L. Fraser (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 26. 290 Kurmuş, 43.

113

Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808-39), and then Sultan Abdülmecid II (r. 1839-61), both of them reformist Ottoman sultans of the mid-nineteenth century, undertook a series of political and economic reforms, which facilitated the move from a more tightly controlled and selfsufficient economy towards a freer market-oriented one. The government abolished earlier restrictions on the economy and promoted the expansion of trade, manufacturing, and agriculture through a series of reforms. Towards the mid-nineteenth century, two events symbolized the transition to a new period in the Ottoman Empire, the Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention in 1838 and the Tanzimat Fermanı in 1839. The former undermined restrictions on economic activity, whereas the latter set forth the reform agenda. The social, economic, and environmental transformations that occurred in Izmir and other port-cities in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century were the direct outcomes of these two sets of actions.

The 1838 Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention

The 1838 Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention, known also as the Baltalimanı Treaty, abolished all state monopolies and protectionist trade policies and opened a new period in Ottoman commerce. With the convention, the Ottoman government adopted liberal economic policies and opened its doors to British merchants. According to the convention, tariffs on exports were to be twelve per cent, while the import tax should be reduced to five per cent. Furthermore, the convention allowed British subjects to move goods between Ottoman provinces without restrictions, as long as they paid the five per cent import tax and a three per cent transit tax, whereas Ottoman merchants continued to pay the internal tariffs of eight per cent.291 Before the Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention of 1838, foreign merchants had a

291

For the original text of the 1838 Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention, see: “Commercial Tariffs and Regulations,” July 14, 1843, AP, Vol. 57, Part VIII, 32-35. For the discussion of the convention, see: Charles Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 1800-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 74-75;

114

limited access to the hinterland of Izmir because of restrictions on the export of goods and the arbitrary actions of administrators and local landowners.292 Removing monopolies and prohibitions on Ottoman exports and imports, the convention gave a new direction to the economy in the Ottoman Empire. It created a lucrative potential for British merchants and encouraged them to expand their trade activities inland. After the removal of barriers impeding the flow of merchandise, not only the foreign merchants, but also local people saw their future in the development of a profitable commercial agriculture geared to Western European markets. In other words, the 1838 Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention revealed the commercial potential of the countryside and provided an incentive for peasants to shift their production to crops and commodities that were highly valuable and marketable such as cereals, cotton, valonia, madder root, opium and tobacco, while at the same time creating an opportunity for merchants, dealers, wholesalers, agents, and intermediaries to profit from the trade in these products. The shift to cash crops and marketable products took place in some areas with little consideration for their ecological impact. For example, cereal farming and fruit- and vine-growing expanded from the valleys into the easily erodible hills and this expansion occurred at the cost of pastures, woodlands, and forests. The Anglo-Trade Convention, as a prelude to attracting foreign capital and investment, creating employment, and promoting export-led growth, was a turning point in the integration of Ottoman Empire into the expanding world-economy. Within a few years, the Ottoman government signed similar conventions were with other European states: the French at the end of 1838, the Hanseatic cities and Sardinia in 1839, the Netherlands,

Şevket Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820-1913: Trade, Investment, and Production (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 19-20; Roger Owen, “The 1838 Anglo-Turkish Convention: An Overview,” New Perspectives on Turkey 7 (Spring 1992): 7-14; V. Necla Geyikdağı, Foreign Investment in the Ottoman Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 21-24. 292 Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “The Port of Smyrna in the Nineteenth Century” in Southeast European Maritime Commerce and Naval Policies from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to 1914, ed. Apostolos Vakalopoulos, Konstantinos Svolopoulos, and Béla Király (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1988), 263.

115

Belgium, Prussia, Spain, Sweden, and Norway in 1840, and Denmark and Tuscany in 1841.293 In 1861-62, the Ottoman Empire conclused new conventions with several European countries, as well as the United States, by which export duties were further lowered from twelve to eight per cent.294 Even though these conventions opened the doors of Western Anatolia to other nationalities, the British merchants took the lion’s share of the region’s imports and exports. The Ottoman government signed the Trade Convention of 1838 at a time when trade between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire was in a flourishing condition. In Europe in general, and in Britain in particular, improved conditions arising from economic growth had increased the purchasing power of the urban populations and encouraged the importation of commodities from the Middle East. Western Anatolia was one of the main areas in the Ottoman Empire to meet the growing demand for food and fibers of urban populations in Europe, especially in Britain, and Izmir played a significant role in the westward transfer of food staples, textiles, dyes, and other specialties. Moreover, it became not only the main exporting port city, through which much of the trade passed, but also a great distributing point for European imports to the east. Izmir was ideally positioned to secure a steady supply of manufactures and hardware coming from industrial plants in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, or Glasgow to many other cities in the Ottoman Empire. Many European merchants preferred Izmir to other ports in the Eastern Mediterranean because they could exchange manufactures and colonial goods for raw materials and agricultural products that they could get from the hinterland of Izmir. This preference was mentioned in a report in 1843 as follows: “Many articles can be imported into Mesopotamia and Persia from Smyrna and Constantinople, more cheaply than from Alexandretta and Beirut, notwithstanding their greater adjacency, in consequence of the lower freights from Europe which are paid to ports

293

Yusuf Kemal Tengirşenk, “Tanzimat Dönemi’nde Osmanlı Devleti’nin Harici Ticari Siyaseti,” Tanzimat I (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1940), 290-93 and Geyikdağı, 23-24. 294 Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 75.

116

which offer a return cargo.”295 The French consul in Smyrna also noted in 1848, “it is still nevertheless through this place [Izmir] that almost all the goods and produce which the large and rich province of Anatolia buys from or sells abroad are imported or exported.”296 In the decades following the 1838 Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention, Izmir experienced a phenomenal commercial growth, a growth making it a major outlet for the agricultural produce of Western Anatolia. Between the 1830s and 1880s, the value of imports rose rapidly by nearly 7.5 times and exports by more than 4 times.297 The city had a share of 7.5 per cent in Ottoman foreign trade in 1850. This figure increased to 30 per cent in 1873.298 In this period of “commercial boom,” the British literally controlled the exports and imports in Western Anatolia and did not leave much room to the merchants of other European states. From the early 1840s, in only four decades, the total volume of exports from Izmir to Britain rose more than three times and imports more than four times.299 In 1839, the British had a share of 27.7 per cent in the imports and 29 per cent in the exports of Izmir.300 In that year, 91 British ships carried a cargo of 15,000 tons from Izmir to British ports. The figures rose to 196 ships and 35,000 tons in 1845, and to 250 ships and 45,084 tons in 1849.301 In the period 1848-52, the number of ships entering the port of Izmir was 3,311, of which 766 belonged to the British.302 According to the estimations of Farley, in 1860 the British had a share of 39.9 per cent in Izmir’s exports and 32.2 per cent in the imports.303 The major import items were cotton manufactures, leather, coffee, spices, metals, bricks and tiles, marble and stone, timber, and hardware, while they exported mainly cotton, wool, silk, opium, valonia, madder root, 295

“Commercial Tariffs and Regulations,” July 14, 1843, AP, Vol. 57, Part VIII, 133. AEF, CC Smyrne, vol. 48, “Report on Trade,” Aug. 5, 1848, qtd in Issawi, 109. 297 Issawi, 109-11. 298 John MacGregor, Commercial Statistics, Vol. II (London: Charles Knight and Co., 1844), 100. 299 Issawi, 82. 300 MacGregor, 100. According to the calculations of Joseph August Reinelt, the British had a share of 34.2 per cent in the imports and 30.5 per cent in the exports of Izmir (Reise nach dem Orient, 149) 301 TNA, FO 78/701, “From Brant to Wellesley,” Jan. 21, 1847 and Edward H. Michelsen, The Ottoman Empire and its Resources, 2nd ed. (London: William Spooner, 1854), 208-9. 302 Michelsen, 208-9. 303 James Lewis Farley, The Resources of Turkey (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862), 91. 296

117

yellow berries, dried fruits, and sponges that arrived in the city from the surrounding areas. In the 1850s, nearly the whole of the madder and valonia exported went to Britain alone.304

Foreign Capital and Commercial Networks

The process of integration of Western Anatolia into the international market had begun in the eighteenth century, and as a result of this process, foreign merchants had formed the earliest commercial networks in the region back at that time. They were able to increase their commercial activities in tandem with the growing trade between the Ottoman Empire and Europe.305 In the nineteenth century, the start of external borrowing, adoption and regulation of free trade practices, and increased opportunities of investment and trade subsequent to the 1838 convention, encouraged more and more foreign companies, agents, and sub-agents to become established in Izmir and its hinterland. As we will see in the following, the competitive commercial milieu in Western Anatolia in the mid-nineteenth century promoted the formation of partnerships, alliances, and agreements between foreign merchants and local merchants and producers. The increased contact between foreign and local merchants enabled the opening of new corridors of commerce and the redefinition of existing ones; and eventually, the reinforcement of the patterns of trade that developed between Izmir and its hinterland. Moreover, the introduction of steamships in the Mediterranean facilitated the movement of commodities to and from Western Anatolia, and sped up commerce between the Ottoman Empire and Europe.306 The commercial networks foreign merchants formed,

304

“Commerce of the Ottoman Empire,” The Merchant’s Magazine and Commercial Review 28, no. 3 (Mar. 1853): 296-300; George Rolleston, Report on Smyrna (London: Great Britain War Office, 1856), 75; and Farley, 92-95. 305 For the formation of commercial networks in the eighteenth century, see: Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “Commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean,” 126-36. 306 Ibid., 137.

118

expanded and diversified were influential in the integration of the fertile Western Anatolian hinterland into the international trading system. In the early 1850s, there were merchants of twenty different countries in the streets of Izmir, and seventeen of these countries had diplomatic representation in the city.307 Among foreign merchants and investors, the British were the most active and influential. From 1825, the year the Levant Company was dissolved, to 1840, thirty-five British companies came into existence in Izmir.308 In 1847, there were 202 British merchants established in Izmir.309 Their number increased to 919 in 1855 and 1,061 in 1856.310 As “the city’s most important commercial force,” British merchants dominated Izmir’s trade until the early twentieth century.311 One of the first concrete results of British initiatives in Izmir was the establishment of the Commercial Bank of Smyrna. Chartered in 1843, it was the first bank, not only in Izmir, but also in the Ottoman Empire.312 The Commercial Bank of Smyrna, placed under the protection of the Danish consulate, was the first step toward a European type of credit institution in the city. It operated until its dissolution in 1847.313 In 1856, the British opened the Ottoman Bank to facilitate their transactions within the Ottoman Empire. Its headquarters was in London, but it had a branch in Izmir. In 1863, with the participation of French capital, it transformed into the Imperial Ottoman Bank.314 By the beginning of the twentieth century, a highly competitive banking system came into operation. In addition to the Imperial Ottoman Bank, banks such as the Bank of Salonica, Credit Lyonnais, Deutsche Orient Bank, the Bank of the Orient, and the Bank of Athens competed for customers by offering ever lower interest 307

Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 57. TNA, FO 83/111, “Report on British Merchant Houses Abroad.” See also Hyde Clark, The History of the British Colony at Smyrna (Istanbul, 1860). 309 TNA, FO 78/832, “Brant to Palmerston,” Mar. 1, 1850. 310 TNA, FO 78/1209, “Brant to Clarendon,” Mar. 11, 1856 and TNA, FO 78/1307, “Vedova to Clarendon,” Apr. 20, 1857. 311 Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “Commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean,” 126. 312 TNA, BT 1/569, “Bank of Smyrna,” July 25, 1843. See also Reşat Kasaba, “XIX. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında İzmir’de Bir İngiliz Bankası: İzmir Ticaret Bankası,” Tarih ve Toplum 8, no. 43 (1987): 57-60, and Yavuz Selim Karakışla, “Osmanlı’da İlk Banka: İzmir Bankası (1842),” Toplumsal Tarih 74 (Feb. 2000): 46-49. 313 Farley, 80 and Kasaba, “XIX. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında,” 58. 314 Geyikdağı, 34. 308

119

rates.315 In the early twentieth century there were eleven banks in the city and only two of them were Ottoman, namely the Ottoman Bank and the Agricultural Bank (Ziraat Bankası).316 These banks, by creating a more competitive credit market in Izmir, opened opportunities for merchants and dealers and enabled them to speculate profitably in cereals, cotton, raisins and other export items.317 During the process of settling, lobbying, and networking of European merchants, the imperial laws restricting the settlement of foreign merchants and purchasing of private property were still in effect. Foreigners were not allowed to settle and travel as they wished within the empire until 1857. Moreover, they were not granted the right to buy real estate until 1866 and agricultural land until 1868. The imperial laws might have raised difficulties but did not prevent foreigners from acquiring houses and agricultural properties in the outlying districts of Izmir and other major towns. Foreigners found ways around the laws and restrictions, for example, by establishing marital relations with protégées and non-Muslim Ottoman subjects. As early as the 1840s, European investors had purchased lands in indirect ways in the fertile river valleys and started their first ventures in commercial farming. For example, the British merchant W. Williamson had 630 acres of land and 7,500 mulberry trees in the vicinity of Izmir in the 1850s.318 By the summer of 1860, at least seven British subjects had purchased large farms in the interior and started agricultural production.319 The restrictions on foreign merchants to settle, to travel and to own real estate and agricultural land strengthened the position of Ottoman agents and dealers, especially the nonMuslim reaya (Ottoman subjects), i.e., Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, who also became much 315

Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “Western and Local Entrepreneurs in Izmir,” 84. Emilia Themopoulou, “The Urbanisation of an Asia Minor City. The Example of Smyrna,” in Smyrnē: hē mētropolē tou mikrasiatikou Hellēnismou = Smyrna: Metropolis of the Asia Minor Greeks (Athens: Ephesos, 2002), 93. 317 Frangakis-Syrett, “Western and Local Entrepreneurs in Izmir,” 84. 318 TNA, FO 195/447, “Williamson to Brant,” July 9, 1855. 319 “Reports Received from Her Majesty’s Consuls Relating to the Condition of Christians in Turkey, 1860” AP, Vol. 67 (1861), 31. 316

120

more active in the delivery of goods and products between local markets and Izmir.320 Foreign merchants employed Ottoman intermediaries on an increasing scale and used them for the purchase, collection, and transfer of export items from the interior to the coast, as well as for the distribution of European manufactures in the country.321 For example, Armenians and Turks controlled the purchase of mohair yarn from Ankara and its transportation to Izmir. Armenians, again, brought Persian silk from Tabriz to Izmir and sold it to foreign merchants there. The silk trade between Bursa and Izmir, on the other hand, was in the hands of Jews and Turks.322 Ottoman intermediaries and merchants, furthermore, were sources of credit and became an instant success as dealers and moneylenders. They stationed themselves in Izmir and in other “arteries of trade,” and utilized the absence of proper financial networks in rural areas “to inject money into western Anatolia.”323 Peasants, who did not have access to banking services and credits, became obliged to use local dealers and moneylenders. In 1862, for instance, the peasants in the surrounding of Izmir had to pay a monthly rate of interest of twelve per cent to borrow money from these people.324 Western Anatolia witnessed competition between local and foreign interests in the second half of the nineteenth century. Both the British and other European merchants based in Izmir and other larger towns competed with local intermediaries and dealers, but also among each other, to develop new arteries of trade and “create their own marketing network,” as well as to control the existing ones.325 For foreign merchants, it was essential to establish a direct contact with producers in the hinterland in order to be able to organize and control production

320

Frangakis, “The Port of Smyrna,” 263. Frangakis-Syrett, “Commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean,” 138. 322 Ibid., 143-44. 323 Reşat Kasaba, “Migrant Labor,” 118. 324 Frangakis, “The Port of Smyrna,” 265. 325 Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 71. On the competition between European and Ottoman merchants for Western Anatolian trade in the nineteenth century, see also: Frangakis-Syrett, “Western and Local Entrepreneurs in Izmir,” 80-82, and idem, “Concurrence commercial et financière,” 117-27. 321

121

and distribution processes.326 Local producers were also in favor of direct contact with European merchants, for they could sell their produce directly at higher prices. The cultivation of agricultural products that were in high demand in European markets not only intensified their farming activities but concentrated them close to towns and urban areas because of the easier access to European merchants in cities and towns than in rural areas.327 In the end, even though European merchants became partly successful in expanding their operations, bypassing intermediaries, and establishing direct contact with locals, they were never able to establish control over the production and distribution of agricultural goods.328 The opening up of Western Anatolia to international markets and the expansion and diversification of trade networks increased the command of European states over the region’s natural resources. Foreigners established factories and industries in Western Anatolia aimed at the expansion of local processing of agricultural products. One of these was Mac Andrews & Forbes, a British joint stock companies in Turkey, which opened a factory in Aydın in 1854 to processed and pack madder root and paste.329 Madder root was used for dyeing textiles and flavoring confectionery and was a popular raw material in nineteenth-century Europe. Although the plant could be grown in a wide area from Spain to Persia, Europeans had found out that the paste of madder root collected in Western Anatolia had the best quality.330 A local plant that had not been valued and was even regarded as a pest and worthless until the investments of Mac Andrews & Forbes became a major export item in a very short time in the mid-nineteenth century.331 In the following two decades, the company expanded throughout

326

Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 75. Kasaba, “Migrant Labor,” 118. 328 Frangakis-Syrett, “Commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean,” 145, and Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 73-74. 329 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 160-61, and Frangakis-Syrett, “Commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean,” 139. 330 Günver Güneş, “Osmanlı Devleti’nde Meyan Kökü Tarımı ve Ticareti (1840-1912),” Kebikeç 18 (2004): 344. 331 For further information on the activities of the MacAndrews, Forbes & Co. company, see: Elena FrangakisSyrett, “British Economic Activities in Izmir,” 200-5. 327

122

the Meander valley and opened three more factories in Söke, Koçarlı, and Nazilli.332 In 1875, the machinery in the four factories of Mac Andrews & Forbes had a value of £50,000.333 The Forbes family made a fortune from the production and exportation of madder root, but they could not monopolize it. The lucrative trade of madder root soon drew other British merchants to the interior, and they also established factories. British investment in madder root in the second half of the nineteenth century provided employment opportunities for thousands of locals in the fields, who dug up the soil and collected the roots, and for laborers in factories, who cleaned, processed, and packed the roots for export to Europe. Most of the foreign direct investment in Western Anatolia was for export, but some was oriented towards the domestic market, such as the construction of a flour mill in the vicinity of Izmir. In the 1840s, even though wheat was cultivated in abundance in Western Anatolia, Izmir still imported flour from abroad because wheat was ground into flour in water mills, and the creeks that provided water power for the mills dried up during the summer months. The consequence of the importation of flour was a rise in the price of bread. These circumstances created an opportunity for European investors to set up a steam-powered mill and grind flour on site.334 A group of British investors established the Smyrna Flour Mill Company, the first flour mill in the vicinity of Izmir in 1850. The company had 1,200 shareholders and a capital worth £30,000.335 In 1853, John Maltass, a British merchant from Izmir, showed an interest in purchasing the shares of the company, but his plans failed when

332

TNA, FO 195/1161, “Reade to Governor General Vilayet of Aydin,” Oct. 1, 1878 and TNA, FO 195/1240, “Reade to White,” Feb. 18, 1879. See also Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 160-61 and FrangakisSyrett, “Commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean,” 139. 333 TNA, FO 195/1161, Oct. 11, 1878. 334 Thomas Tredgold, “Steam Corn-Mills Erected at Smyrna and Worked by Engines Recently Constructed by W. Joyce and Co. of Greenwich,” in The Principles and Practice and Explanation of the Steam Engine, Including Pumping, Stationary, and Marine Engines, Vol. III, ed. Thomas Tredgold (London: John Weale, 185253), 3-4. 335 TNA, FO 195/910, July 1, 1864.

123

the Crimean War broke out.336 The Smyrna Flour Mill Company ceased its operations by the end of the war because of the economic distress the war created.337 After the end of the war, European investors started to operate new steam flour mills and supplied the domestic market.338 In the 1850s and 1860s, while foreign merchants were in constant intercourse with their Ottoman counterparts, they kept pressuring the Ottoman authorities to acquire privileges and “to further expand the limits of extraterritoriality.”339 As they settled in Izmir and in the surrounding areas, the pressure they brought on the government intensified. Even though the government had abolished restrictions on foreign merchants’ settlement and travel in 1857, their demands for the right to own property and agricultural land continued. One European observer in 1858 noted: I believe that if we enforce the Hatt-i-Humayoon, and enable Europeans to buy land, the coast of Asia Minor will become an English and German colony. They are the only colonizing nations. Asia Minor is a better field for them than America. There is far more unoccupied land; it may be bought of individuals for a shilling or two an acre; of the Government, for the mere cost of writing out the grant.340 The removal of restrictions on agricultural exports and ultimately the adoption of laws that allowed foreigners to purchase real estate led to an increase in foreigners’ possession of agricultural land. Granting foreigners the right to buy agricultural estate was important in a sense that it encouraged investment in commercial agriculture and development of trade networks in Western Anatolia. The pace of land purchases, desire to commercialize agricultural

production,

and

competition

for

control

over

trade

networks

were

336

TNA, FO 195/389, Sept. 14, 1853. See also: Zeki Arıkan and Abdullah Martal, “İzmir’de İlk Buharlı Un Fabrikası” Güney Doğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi 12 (1998): 1-22. 337 TNA, FO 195/687, May 8, 1858. 338 For example, Luigi Storari, in the guidebook he wrote in 1857, refers to a 70 horsepower steam engine flour mill at the Pointe district of Izmir. Luigi Storari, Guida con cenni Storici di Smirne (Turin, 1857), 29. 339 Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 71 340 Nassau W. Senior, A Journal Kept in Turkey and Greece in the Autumn of 1857 and the Beginning of 1858 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859), 206.

124

accelerated further by the spread of the news that a railway line would be built connecting Izmir with the interior.

Technological Processes: The Construction of a Railroad Network

In this chapter, we have looked so far at the changes in population and settlement and the expansion of commercial and trade networks that enabled different types of rural residents in Western Anatolia to extend their control over the land and exploit the available natural resources. The construction of railroads was complementary to these processes. Railroads made it possible to move raw materials, agricultural products, foodstuffs, textiles, manufactured goods, and so on, over vast distances and at cheaper costs. They fueled production and trade, stimulated migration and settlement, and promoted economic growth. Railroads gave an impetus to the transformation of Izmir from a transit port to a gateway city that tied the fertile Western Anatolian farmlands to European markets. The dramatic changes brought about by railways in the regions into which they extended cannot be underestimated; however, the role of roads and tracks that had existed long before the introduction of railways should not be overlooked. Land roads were in use for hundreds of years and contributed to local and regional economies in a meaningful way. Railways as a new form of transport became a valuable means of moving goods and people when land roads fell short of the needs of the economy and society. For this reason, from the perspective of environmental history, rather than assessing the impact of railroads by comparing places with and without them, we should explore their particular geographies and why they were built, what kind of impact they had on agricultural production, and how they redefined and contributed to existing social and economic structures.

125

The Road Network of Western Anatolia

Long before the construction of railroads there were dirt roads and passages and merchants and itinerants used them for centuries. The ancient Greeks, and more importantly, the Romans had constructed an extensive network of trade roads that crisscrossed Asia Minor. The Ottomans continued to use most of the roads their predecessors built as far as possible.341 In the nineteenth century, many roads the Romans built in Western Anatolia, though not in perfect condition, were still in use, allowing merchants to move goods between the cities and towns. Of these roads, there were two major arteries that led from the interior to the Western Anatolian coast. The Oriental Trade Road connected Ephesus to Cappadocia. It followed the course of the Büyük Menderes River, passing through Magnesia (at Meandrum), Aydın, Sultanhisar, Nazilli, and Sarayköy. The road then turned towards Dinar and Çay, continued eastwards, and reached the Central Anatolian Plateau. From there, it diverged into several branches, some advancing as far as Konya and Kayseri.342 In the early-modern period, this road, winding at the foot of the Aydın Mountains, followed the northern bank of Meander River and gave life to the cities and towns along it. Aydın perhaps benefited more than any other city located on the historical Oriental Trade Road. In 1845-46, it was an overgrown town with a population of approximately 17,800 people.343 Thanks to the caravan trade, Aydın continued to serve as an important trade town, even after it passed its provincial center status to Izmir in 1851. “Guzel Hissar, more commonly called Aidin, is a thriving city, having about 60,000 inhabitants, and is the point of concourse for persons from all parts of the interior,” wrote Sir Macdonald Stephenson in 1859, “who resort to that market for the 341

For historical trade roads in the Ottoman Empire, see: James Rennell, A Treatise on the Comparative Geography of Western Asia (London: Rivington, 1831); Vivien de Saint-Martin, Description de Géographie de L’Asie Mineure (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1852); Franz Taeschner, Das anatolische Wegenetz nach osmanischen Quellen (Leipzig: Mayer & Müller, 1924-26); David French, Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor (Oxford, UK: British Archeological Reports, 1988); and Luther. 342 Yapucu, Modernleşme Sürecinde Bir Sancak, 14 and 28-37. 343 Terzi, 147.

126

disposal of produce in small parcels to the resident dealers trading with Smyrna, and for the purchase of foreign goods.”344 The Royal Road of the Achaemenids, on the other hand, began in Sardis, continued eastwards towards the Central Anatolian Plateau, and ended in the Persian city of Susa. The road connected Sardis to Ephesus via the Karabel Pass between present day Kemalpaşa and Torbalı.345 In Western Anatolia, the Royal Road followed the southern bank of the Gediz River. After passing through Turgutlu, Salihli, and Alaşehir, the road reached Uşak, Afyonkarahisar, Akşehir, Konya and Kayseri.346 There were many similarities between these two trade roads. Both roads were destined to or departed from Ephesus. Both roads followed the course of major rivers eastwards and joined the common road to Konya in the Central Anatolian Plateau.347 Both roads, again, were fairly linear, but winding, crossing the slopes of mountain chains. The Ottoman government built caravanserais along these roads to cater to travelers and accommodate their needs.348 Each caravanserai was one day’s travel away from the next. Besides these two major roads, there were several other roads, passages, and trails connecting Izmir to the neighboring cities and towns. Probably the most important of these roads went northwards, passing over the Caravan Bridge, the land gate, and reaching Manisa. From there, it continued to Akhisar, Susurluk and Bursa, and connected Izmir to Istanbul. The course of this road was similar to the highway between Izmir and Istanbul today. From Akhisar, a secondary road went via Soma to Bergama, as it still is today, from where it continued further to Ayvalık and

344

Rowland Macdonald Stephenson, Railways in Turkey (London: John Weale, 1859), 6. William Mitchell Ramsay, The Historical Geography of Asia Minor (1890; repr., Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1962, 30. 346 Scherzer, 96. 347 Rennell, Vol. I, 291. 348 For the caravan routes in the Ottoman Empire, see: Taeschner and Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change, 1590-1699,” 484. 345

127

Edremit.349 Another road went from Izmir to Aydın and Denizli, where it split into two; one branch reaching Korkuteli and Antalya, the other to Burdur and Isparta.350 In the classical period of the Ottoman Empire, particular villages preserved and repaired the roads and in return obtained tax exemptions from the government. However, in later periods, as sea transport became most cost effective, the government neglected land routes and made little investment in them. Rather than constructing new roads, efforts were made to upgrade the existing roads.351 Despite these efforts, the major roads in Western Anatolia were still not paved in the first half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, providing access from the coast to the interior and from one town or village to the other, trade and transportation were highly dependent on climatic and other conditions. As we have seen in the previous chapter, severe weather could occasionally interrupt the traffic. Floods, torrents, and rainstorms could render roads impassable; and horses, camels, or wagons could not traverse the open country. In the absence of paved roads and wheeled traffic in Western Anatolia, the camel continued to serve as the most important means to convey merchandise by land. In the midnineteenth century, because of camels’ ability to go large distances with little water and food, merchants still preferred them to conduct pilgrimages, conquer or explore new lands, spread ideas and knowledge, and exchange goods. Over short distances between villages and farms, on the other hand, local merchants and villagers used donkeys and mules for the transportation of goods, while horses rarely served as pack animals.352 In 1859, shortly before the opening of the first section of the Izmir-Aydın railway, “according to a low average of the various estimates made by a commissioner sent out for the purpose,” there were 10,000 349

A Hand-book for Travelers in the Ionian Islands, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, and Constantinople, 2nd ed. (London: J. Murray, 1845), 280-98. 350 Scherzer, 96. 351 “Transportation,” in Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Selçuk Akşin Somel (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2003), 303. 352 TNA, FO 195/771, “Blunt to Buliver,” Aug. 1, 1863 and Stephenson, 71-72.

128

camels and 500 mules, “at the cost of £500,000 per annum” on the Oriental Trade Route.353 In addition to these, there were at least 20,000 camels “employed on various routes conveying the produce from the interior to the sea.”354 According to the British consul Blunt in Izmir, the bulk of the transit was in the hands of camel drivers in 1863.355 In this period, transport by camel was obviously much more widespread; however, as Edward E. Michelsen wrote in 1854, it was “so expensive that only the more valuable goods can bear the cost.”356 F. Wakefield’s report sent from Afyonkarahisar in 1857 confirms this claim. He wrote that “the harvest of grain for two years, over and above the necessary consumption is still in the stores here and at Sandıklı, all owing to high price of transport,” while the district around the city was “said to send from £75,000 to £100,000 worth of opium to Smyrna annually.”357 A similar situation appears to have existed in Aydın, which had “large bazaars filled to overflowing with produce of all kinds that can find no market.”358 The high cost of transport limited the cultivation of certain crops for export and only in the vicinity of the cities on the coastal strip could people bring their goods and produce to market (Table 2). Table 2: Transportation costs in Western Anatolia

from Izmir to Manisa Aydın Uşak Konya

distance to Izmir (km) 48 112 220 530

transport of grain price per ton (shilling) 24,80 69 120 220

transport of other goods price per ton (shilling) 30,10 37 149,11 275

Source: TNA, FO 195/460, “Wilkin to Redcliffe,” July 9, 1855

353

Railway Record, May 30, 1857 and Stephenson, 6. Stephenson, 6. 355 TNA, FO 195/771, “Blunt to Buliver,” Aug. 1, 1863. 356 Michelsen, 187-88. 357 Stephenson, 7. 358 Ibid., 7-8. 354

129

The condition of land roads and communication, as well as transportation costs in Western Anatolia, became an issue when there were significant changes in the volume and nature of trade passing through the port of Izmir. In a time period when agriculture and trade prospered, poor transportation and limited access to regional markets hindered a particular kind of development. “The means of transport,” in the eyes of European observers, was “the sole limit to production.”359 They reflected their growing dissatisfaction with the condition of roads and its negative impact in their letters and accounts, exaggeratedly but not altogether wrongly. They stressed the need for improved roads, and the benefits that could be expected from better roads. For example, in April 1845, the British consul in Izmir reported that the producers sold bulky items to local intermediaries and speculators at lower prices because of the cost of carrying of bulky items from distant places and added that “the construction of roads is a most desirable improvement,” for it would “essentially ameliorate the condition of agriculturalists by enabling them to transport their commodities to the sea ports for sale at so much less expense than they can do at present.”360 Even though the condition of land transport was not much better in Europe, especially in the central and eastern parts, canals and navigable rivers were used for the transport of people and goods inland and provided access to markets. Rural residents employed the rivers in Western Anatolia in the irrigation of cultivated lands and furnishing of power for water mills, yet they were not navigable.361 In the 1850s, farmers’ and producers’ desire for better transport to move goods to the markets was growing; however, despite the letters and petitions written by European merchants and consuls, no concrete steps were taken for the improvement of the roads. The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853 had postponed the plans for the construction of new roads in Western 359

Stephenson, 9. TNA, FO 195/241, “Brant to Canning,” Apr. 25, 1845. 361 In 1884-1885, Ohannes Samancı Efendi, an Ottoman Armenian merchant, proposed a project to open the Menderes River for commercial navigation. Nevertheless, the project failed due to lack of capital. For further information see Mehmet Başaran, “Büyük Menderes Nehri Efsaneleri ve 19. Yüzyılda Nehir Ulaşımı Projesi,” Toplumsal Tarih 54 (1998): 49-51 and Bülent Çelik, “Gerçekleşmemiş Bir Yol Hikayesi: 19. Yüzyıl’ın Son Çeyreğinde Menderes Nehrinin Ulaşıma Açılması Projesi,” Ankara Üniversitesi Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi 34, no. 38 (2005): 113-30. 360

130

Anatolia because a “large portion of its able bodied labourers” were conscripted for the Ottoman army in Crimea.362

Railroads in Western Anatolia

The Ottomans’ first experience with a railroad was during the Crimean War. The wartime railroad the British built between Sebastopol and Balaklava had helped the Allied forces to forward their supplies from the coast to the interior.363 This must have impressed the Ottoman sultan because even before the war in Crimea ended, he transmitted to the ambassadors of European governments in Istanbul a letter regarding “the fundamental conditions” for the establishment of railroads in the Ottoman Empire.364 The railroad line proposed in the sultan’s letter was from Istanbul to Belgrade. However the projected line did not attract the attention of European investors because the chief task of railroads, in their minds, was to connect regions that promised a particularly high profit. Moreover, railroad investors and engineers had to give attention to low operating costs and consider any topographical factors that might increase the operating costs. Therefore, investors instead considered a project for linking Izmir to Aydın through the Menderes Valley to exploit the agricultural products available. The idea to construct a railroad line in Western Anatolia aroused high attention from the government in a short time because a large part of Aydın Vilayet was still crown land and the railroad could considerably increase the value of land.365 The initial incentive for railroads in Western Anatolia came from British entrepreneurs towards the end of the Crimean War. On February 6, 1856, Robert Wilkin, representing four

362

TNA, FO 195/389, “Brant to Redcliffe,” June 17, 1853. For much information on this railway, see: Brian Cooke, The Grand Crimean Central Railway: The Railway That Won a War - The Story of the Railway Built at Balaklava by the British during the Crimean War (Cheshire, UK: Cavalier House, 1990). 364 “The War in the Crimea,” Times (London), Oct. 2, 1855. 365 “Turkey,” Times (London), Apr. 5, 1856. 363

131

other British merchants residing in Izmir, applied to the Ottoman government for a concession to construct a railroad from Izmir to Aydın.366 The concession, which included the construction and working of an 81-mile railroad line, as well as wharves, warehouses, custom-house, and other buildings, was granted to these British entrepreneurs on September 23, 1856.367 In May 1857, they sold the concession to a group of merchants in Britain, who then chartered a company under the name “Ottoman Railway from Smyrna to Izmir of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan.”368 The development was received with enthusiasm in Britain and announced as “one of the most important works that could be constructed” for the trading interests of the Ottoman Empire.369 After the initial survey conducted by engineers, the project was divided into three sections: The first section was from Izmir to Mount Saladin near Selçuk and was 45 miles in length. Because of perfectly flat country, the Mount SaladinSelçuk section was considered the easiest section. The contractors planned to complete this section by the end of 1858. The second section was only eleven miles in length, yet it was the most difficult part of the project because it involved considerable engineering work, such as blasting tunnels through Mount Saladin. The last section, twenty-five miles in length, was

366

BOA, İ.MEC.MAH/304, Feb. 6, 1856. See also W. Davis Haskoll, Railways in the East and All High Thermometrical Regions (London: Atchley and Co., 1864), 51 and Ali Akyıldız, “Osmanlı Anadolusunda İlk Demiryolu: İzmir-Aydın Hattı (1856-1866),” in Çağını Yakalayan Osmanlı: Osmanlı Devleti'nde Modern Haberleşme ve Ulaştırma Teknikleri, ed. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Mustafa Kaçar (Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art, and Culture, 1995): 250. For works on the Izmir-Aydın railroad, see: Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 57-85; Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 183-85; Esin Kahya, “Türkiye’nin İlk Demiryolları,” Belleten 52, no. 202 (Apr. 1988), 209-18; Şevket Pamuk, “Türkiye’deki İlk Demiryolu: İzmir-Aydın,” Toplumsal Tarih 5 (1994): 35-37; Yakup Bektaş, “The Imperial Ottoman Izmir-toAydin Railway: The British Experimental Line in Asia Minor,” in Science, Technology and Industry in the Ottoman World, ed. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Ahmed Djebbar, and Feza Günergun (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000): 139-52; Gülçin Uzuntepe, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda İlk Demiryolu: İzmir-Aydın-Kasaba (Turgutlu) (1856-1897),” M.A Thesis (Eskişehir: Anadolu Univ., 2000); Nedim Atilla, İzmir Demiryolları (Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2002); and Geyikdağı, 85-87. 367 Haskoll, 51; Ottoman Railway Company, The Ottoman Railway from Smyrna to Aidin of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, Statutes of the Company (London, 1856), 1; Wilhelm von Pressel, Les chemins de fer en Turquie d’Asie; projet d’un réseau complet (Zurich: Orell Fü ssli, 1902), 53; and Akyıldız, 251. 368 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 59. 369 “Money-Market and City Intelligence,” Times (London), May 23, 1857.

132

from Mount Saladin to Aydın and did not include any serious difficulty.370 The contractors planned to complete entire project by September 1860.371 The construction work started with a public ceremony that took place in Izmir on September 22, 1857 (Figure 2).372 The machinery and equipment for the construction was brought from Britain.373 In the first section of the railroad, about 3,000 workers from seventeen different nations were employed.374 As many as 1,200 of them were found in towns along the railroad line, and the company offered higher wages in order to keep them working on railroad construction.375 The works at the second, or “tunnel section,” where more than 500 workers were employed, also commenced at the same time as the first section.376 The progress was satisfactory at the beginning and the experts hoped “to open the first two sections simultaneously.”377 However, financial problems caused the construction work to be discontinued.378 In November 1858, the works resumed, but shortly afterward a landslide filled the road cut from which the tunnel was planned to run, and this incident raised concerns about the safety and solidity of such a tunnel.379 A disagreement arose among engineers, who proposed the abandonment of a tunnel through Mount Saladin and crossing the mountain by means of inclined planes, and the contractor, who insisted that a tunnel be constructed between the two sides of the mountain.380 Sir Macdonald Stephenson, the chairman of the Izmir-Aydın Railway Company, went to Izmir to settle the disputes among engineers and

370

“The First Turkish Railway,” Times (London), Nov. 16, 1858 and Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 59. 371 Stephenson, 3-4 and Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 58. 372 TNA, FO 78/1307, “Blunt to Clarendon,” Sept. 28, 1857; “Commencement of the Smyrna and Aidin Railway,” Illustrated London News, Oct. 31, 1857; and BOA, İ.MEC.VALA/16828, Oct., 29, 1857. 373 Akyıldız, 256. 374 Stephenson, 3. 375 “Turkey,” Times (London), Mar. 9, 1858. 376 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 67. 377 Stephenson, 4. 378 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 67-68. 379 TNA, FO 78/1447, “Blunt to Russell,” Sept. 10, 1859. 380 TNA, FO 78/1447, “Blunt to Russell,” Dec. 14, 1859.

133

contractors and supervise the construction works.381 Consequently, the tunnel project was scratched and the parties agreed to get over the mountain by inclined planes.382 A change in the initial plan to connect the two sides of the mountain, as well as an extension of the deadline for the completion of the first section, stimulated the company and the twenty-sevenmile section from Izmir to Torbalı was opened on December 24, 1860.383 The construction works continued and an additional ten miles from Torbalı to Cellatkahve was opened on September 9, 1861.384 The first section was completed when the railroad finally reached Selçuk on September 15, 1862.385 The company carried on the works to complete the second and third sections of the Izmir-Aydın railroad, while the trains operated between Izmir and Selçuk. Construction work was suspended in 1865 again, this time because of the outbreak of a cholera epidemic, which killed 14 engineers and 44 workers in that year.386 When the epidemic was over and new engineers traveled from Britain to the region, construction work resumed and the 81-mile-long railroad was finally completed on July 1, 1866.387

381

TNA, FO 195/610, “Stephenson to Muammer Pasha,” Jan. 21, 1860, and TNA, FO 78/1533, “Blunt to Bulwer,” Jan. 23, 1860. 382 TNA, FO 78/1447, “Blunt to Russell,” Jan. 23, 1860, and BOA, İ.MEC.MAH/1026, Nov.16, 1861. 383 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 70. 384 Antonin du Velay, Essai sur l’Histoire Financiere de la Turquie (Paris: Rousseau, 1903), 578, and Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 56. 385 “Opening of the Smyrna and Aiden Railway,” Railway Times, Nov. 15, 1862, and Akyıldız, 262. 386 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 71. 387 Ibid. and Akyıldız, 265. For the cholera epidemic in the mid-nineteenth century Izmir, see: Chapter 2.

134

Figure 2: Commencement of the Izmir-Aydın Railway

Source: “Commencement of the Smyrna and Aidin Railway,” Illustrated London News, Oct. 31, 1857.

On July 4, 1863, the English merchant M. Edward Price obtained a concession to construct a second railroad line from Izmir to Turgutlu (Kasaba).388 The planned route was in the Gediz valley, traversing a distance of 57.8 miles and tapping the fertile farmlands to the south of Gediz River. A year later, however, Price transferred the concession to the “SmyrnaCassaba Railway Company,” which was established in London.389 The construction started in 1864 and proceeded at a swifter rate than the Izmir-Aydın railroad line. In contrast to the Smyrna-Aidin Railway Company, the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway Company faced neither any financial difficulties nor any topographical obstacles. The company completed the most important section, from Izmir to Manisa, a distance of forty-one miles, by October 1865.390 388

Von Pressel, 54 and Hermann Schmidt, Das Eisenbahnwesen in der asiatischen Türkei (Berlin: Franz Siemenroth, 1914), 96. 389 Karal, 466. For more information on the Izmir-Turgutlu railroad, see: Kahya, 209-18; Bektaş, 149-52; Uzuntepe, 61-89; Atilla; and Geyikdağı, 87-88. 390 Bektaş, 149.

135

The remaining 16.8 miles to Turgutlu was completed in the following year, and the inauguration of the Izmir-Turgutlu railroad took place on January 10, 1866, a few months before the first train reached the Aydın railroad station.391 The Izmir-Aydın railway was the first railroad in Anatolia and, after the short line from Chernovoda to Constanza on the Black Sea, the second in the Ottoman Empire. With the line, Izmir became the first port-city with a regular train connection to its hinterland in the Ottoman Empire, and after Alexandria, the second in the Middle East. Railroad construction in Western Anatolia continued in the following decades in a much more efficient way. The Smyrna-Aydın Railway Company obtained concessions in 1879 and 1888 to extend the railroad further into the interior. In 1881, the railroad reached Kuyucak, and a year later Sarayköy. In 1883, the Smyrna-Aydın railroad penetrated into the Küçük Menderes Valley, when a branch from Torbalı to Tire, a distance of 29.8 miles, was completed.392 This line was further extended to Ödemiş at the foot of Bozdağ Mountains (Tmolus) in 1884. On the main line, the construction works to extend the railroad from Sarayköy to Dinar, a distance of ninety miles, started in 1888 and were completed in record time in less than a year. When the railroad reached Dinar, the whole length of the main line and branches had a length of 320 miles.393 The Izmir-Turgutlu railroad did not stay as it had been built, either. In 1871, the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway Company obtained a concession to extend the line to Alaşehir.394 The Turgutlu-Alaşehir section, a distance of 47.2 miles, was completed on March 13, 1875.395 In 1893, the contractors transferred the concession to construct and operate new lines on the main Izmir-Turgutlu railway to the French company “Société Chemin de fer Smyrna-Cassaba 391

TNA, FO 195/797, “Cumberbatch to Lyons,” Feb. 8, 1866. Von Pressel, 53 and Schmidt, 90. 393 Uzuntepe, 50 and Kahya, 212. 394 Schmidt, 96. 395 Du Velay, 578. 392

136

et Prolongement,” which constructed the Alaşehir-Uşak and Uşak-Afyonkarahisar extensions.396 Izmir became connected to Central and Eastern Anatolia when the IzmirTurgutlu railroad reached Afyonkarahisar, which is on the Anatolian (Istanbul-Bagdad) railway line. The Izmir-Turgutlu railroad extended to the north as well, when the company completed the fifty-seven-mile Manisa-Soma section in 1890.397 With these eastward and northward extensions, the whole length of the main line and branches of Western Anatolian railroads had reached 643.4 miles in less than three decades (Table 3). In 1859, while the construction of the Izmir-Aydın railway was in process, Sir Macdonald Stephen had commented: “The railway, once constructed, must be the channel of communication between Europe and Asia, the great artery through which the pulses of Asiatic trade must throb for evermore.”398 Stephen’s predictions came true when the first trains began running along the Izmir-Aydın and Izmir-Turgutlu railroads. By replacing the poor roads and dirt tracks and reducing the cost of transportation, the railroads fostered the flow of natural resources from the country to the city and of supplies vice versa and contributed to the increase in the interconnectivity between the interior and coast. Railroads helped to lower the transportation costs for bulk agricultural products, such as cereals; each car of a train could carry a load of grain equal to that of 125 camels.399 Railroads brought vitality to the country and encouraged further settlement and migration. Towns and villages that lay along the railroads served the rural population with stores, bank branches and insurance agents’ offices, and legal and medical services. These places grew economically more quickly than those that were located away from the railroad. Some new settlements also emerged as a result of the railways, but most of the cities and towns were pre-existing and the railroads linked them on a regional scale. The expansion of railroads considerably increased the value of land adjacent to 396

Du Velay, 580 and Bektaş, 149. Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın (Istanbul, 1896), 86. 398 Stephenson, 13. 399 Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 122. 397

137

railroad line, promoting greater investments in agricultural land. For example, an acre of land increased from £16 to £40 at Çobanisa, a small Greek village near Manisa on the IzmirTurgutlu line.400

Map 2: Railroad Network in Western Anatolia in the 1880s

400

William Cochran, Pen and Pencil in Asia Minor; or Notes from the Levant (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1887), 219-20.

138

During the construction of the Izmir-Aydın and Izmir-Turgutlu lines, British merchants anticipated that they would eliminate the caravan trade in Western Anatolia.401 Nevertheless, the opening of these lines did not eliminate, but redefined the functions of camel caravans in the region. With the opening of the railways, camels did not go out of fashion but were “relegated to the position of feeders to the railway.”402 Previously, camels transported high-valued goods and items from faraway places to Izmir, following the courses of major rivers. After the opening of the railroad lines, however, camel caravans continued to exist as a valuable means of transport for short distances between productive agricultural districts and the railway. Because railroads did not reach everywhere, merchants remained depended on caravaneers to extract agricultural resources and raw materials from these districts.403 In 1865, the number of camels in Western Anatolia was slightly higher than it was in 1857.404 Nearly half of the traffic was still carried on by the camels in 1866.405 Six years later, there were still thousands of camels in Western Anatolia, and according to Turgutlu, one-fifth of all camels in Anatolia was in this region.406 An article published by the London Times in October 1867 confirms this; it stated that railroads, “in spite of the competition of the camel drivers,” stimulated the increase of traffic and this “had been chiefly derived from agricultural development, which had been theretofore retarded, owing the difficulty of transport.”407 The shipment of goods in severe weather was a big problem before the opening of railroads. For example, in the 1850s a journey from Aydın to Izmir took four days and at the end of each day the bags and baskets needed to be removed from the camels’ backs and put 401

Times (London), Sept. 28, 1861. Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 104. 403 Quataert, “Age of Reforms,” 820. 404 “Public Works in Asiatic Turkey: Existing and Projected,” Fraser’s Magazine 18, no. 108 (Dec. 1878): 7024. 405 “Commercial Reports Received at the Foreign Office from Her Majesty’s Consuls, in 1867” AP, Vol. 68 (1868), 229. 406 Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 99. 407 “Railway Intelligence,” Times (London), Oct. 29, 1867. 402

139

upon the ground. However, the rain could damage the bags and baskets and spoil the contents entirely.408 Railroads provided an effective solution to this problem because trains could operate independently of climatic factors and with considerable regularity, speed, and safety under all weather conditions. Table 3: Western Anatolian railways; main lines and extensions

Izmir – Aydın Aydın – Kuyucak Kuyucak – Sarayköy Sarayköy – Dinar Torbalı – Tire Çatal – Ödemiş Paradiso – Buca Gaziemir – Seydiköy Sütlaç – Çivril Ortaklar – Söke Dinar – Eğirdir Goncalı – Denizli Izmir-Turgutlu Turgutlu – Alaşehir Alaşehir – Uşak Uşak – Afyonkarahisar İzmir – Bornova Manisa – Soma Soma – Bandırma

Length (miles) 80.7 35.4 27.3 90.0 29.8 15.5 1.6 0.9 19.3 13.7 58.6 5.8 57.8 47.2 73,6 84.3 3.1 57.4 113.6

Izmir – Aydın (Total) Izmir – Turgutlu (Total)

378.6 437.0

Concession Date 1856 1879 1879 1888 1879 1879 1856 1856 1888 1888 1888 1863 1871 1884 1884 1865 1887

Opening Date 1866 1881 1882 1889 1883 1884 1860 1858 1889 1890 1912 1889 1866 1875 1887 1890 1866 1890 1912

Company ORC ORC ORC ORC ORC ORC ORC ORC ORC ORC ORC ORC SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP SCP

Sources: Von Pressel, 54-55; Philip Ernest Schoenberg, “The Evolution of Transport in Turkey”, Middle Eastern Studies 13, no. 3 (Oct. 1977), 364; Geyikdağı, 89. ORC: The Ottoman Railway Company from Smyrna to Aydin SCP: The Smyrna-Cassaba Railway Company; renamed Société Ottomane du Chemin de fer de Smyrne Cassaba et Prolongements in 1893

The Izmir-Aydın and Izmir-Turgutlu railroads not only forwarded agricultural goods and raw materials from the country to the city, but also moved people more quickly and in a regulated manner. Railroads shrank distances between places and people and increased the speed of life. By the end of March 1862, the number of passengers using the train had exceeded 167,000 travelers, even though only a small portion of the railway line had been 408

Stephenson, 8.

140

opened to traffic.409 About eight months later, on the day it reached to Selçuk, a total of 349,700 people had travelled on the partially completed Izmir-Aydın railway.410 By the end of the century, this number increased by nearly a hundred per cent and reached 704,818 in 1897.411 In short, railroads, increasing mobility and communication for the majority Western Anatolians, broke the centuries-old isolation of rural communities and ended physical, social, and ecological separation of the city and the countryside. No other technological innovation had as great a social, economic, and environmental impact on the Western Anatolia landscape as the railroads built in the second half of the nineteenth century. Steam locomotives fired by wood and coal replaced human and animal power, which had been the only source of energy for thousands of years. The development of railroads was a turning point in the region’s history, as they fueled production and trade, stimulated migration and settlement, and linked Izmir to its hinterland to exploit agricultural resources and forward them to European markets. Road and bridge constructions, developments in port facilities, factories, banking, insurance, and other urban institutions, and infrastructure came also along with the railroads, making Izmir the focus of all trading activity in Western Anatolia. Furthermore, railroads, by facilitating the movement of urban and rural residents, also eroded the psychological boundary, the subjective perception of the differentness of the ‘other,’ between the city and country and united them in a common space.

409

“Railway Intelligence,” Times (London), Mar. 29, 1862. “Opening of the Smyrna and Aiden Railway,” Railway Times, Nov. 15, 1862. 411 Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın (Istanbul, 1901), 75. 410

141

Conclusion

The structure of European economies in the nineteenth century was not the same as it had been during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy and from rural to urban society had turned food producers in Europe into food consumers and increased their need for staples and supplies. The changing economic pattern of urban-rural relations in Europe resulted not only in the enhancement of economic relations between the city and countryside and the regulation of commercial networks, but also in the expansion and improvement of roads and other channels of communication such as waterways, bridges, and railways. The quickening pace of European industrialization and urbanization had a profound impact on patterns of trade and manufacturing in Izmir and its hinterland. The city increasingly relied for its prosperity on exports generated by its immediate hinterland and, as a result, the volume and nature of trade flows changed significantly. In the period between 1840 and 1860, the constant increase in the volume of trade went hand-in-hand with the increase in population and the extension of agricultural activity. Furthermore, in addition to the increase in the volume of trade, there was a substantial increase in the diversity of products traded. In this period, agricultural products came from more distant and more various origins. The area under cultivation expanded as more immigrants and refugees settled in the fertile river valleys of Western Anatolia and engaged in agricultural activity. New villages were founded as old ones expanded. Agricultural innovation spread from village to village. All of these processes attracted new capital from Europe and promoted foreign companies to center in Izmir. As the century progressed, more immigrants, refugees, and itinerants settled the countryside and worked in the agricultural sector. Besides them, the number of merchants involved in the trade of agricultural 142

commodities increased considerably. Whereas a kind of “hinterland-directed economy” was replacing the centuries old economy based on transcontinental trade, the city was evolving from being a transfer point of merchandise coming from faraway places into a gateway city controlling and commanding the trade of local products between its hinterland and the outside world. In this period, on the other hand, it appeared that the lack of modern roads made transport and communication between the coast and interior slow and arduous. For the full realization of the region’s production potential and the operation of an export-oriented economy around commercial agriculture, the time and cost of the transport of products to the port should needed to be reduced. The introduction of railroads into Western Anatolia was an important step for the achievement of this goal. Railroads enabled merchants and intermediaries to have easier access to the interior, and thereby to expand their commercial networks to wider regions. Furthermore, railroads helped reduce the burden on farmers and producers of transporting their crops to Izmir for export. From the 1860s on, railroads meandered up and down the river valleys of Western Anatolia and contributed to the expansion of the area of land under agricultural production. Places in mountainous, swampy, or otherwise agriculturally less significant areas that were once thought to be insignificant, inaccessible, or dangerous, became less remote, more secure, and more easily accessible. The physical, social, and cultural boundary between the city and country was gradually transcended and penetrated by railroad tracks that sliced across the farmlands of Western Anatolia.

143

CHAPTER FOUR

TRANSFORMING THE WESTERN ANATOLIAN LANDSCAPE

Introduction

In the earlier part of the nineteenth century, two types of economy existed in interaction but also independently of each other in Western Anatolia. An export-oriented economy in Izmir concentrated on the handling of shipments of goods coming from Anatolia, Iran, and Syria, while a subsistence economy based on small agricultural units established itself in the interior parts of the region. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the decades surrounding the mid-nineteenth century witnessed significant changes in population and settlement patterns in Western Anatolia. In this period, not only the overall population, but also the number of people involved in agriculture increased rapidly with refugee migrations and resettlement of nomadic groups. These newcomers gradually benefited from geographical factors and climatic conditions as they adjusted their agricultural production and took advantage of market opportunities. Merchants, intermediaries, and dealers, convinced of the region’s potential for agricultural production, took on the responsibility to speed up the flow of credit to agriculture through trade conventions and the establishment of banks and companies. From the 1860s on, expanding transport networks in the region, especially the construction of railroads, hastened the growth of agriculture by encouraging settlement, town development, and land reclamation. The railroad networks drove remote areas of Western Anatolia deeply into the market economy. In other words, railroads, acting “as a powerful force upon nature,” as Cronon has noted in Nature’s Metropolis, facilitated the flow of

144

agricultural surplus coming from the interior, promoted commercialization of agriculture, and fostered integration of the region with world markets.412 Historians have seen railroads as promoters of economic growth, for they enabled transportation of raw materials, agricultural produce, foodstuffs, textiles, manufactured goods, and so on, over vast distances and at cheaper costs. Indeed, railroads had a great impact on economic and social life in cities through which they passed, but they did so, at least in part, by altering the environment in which that life was lived. They catalyzed the transformation of the physical world into a commodified human landscape and contributed to the already increasing interaction between the city and country. By reducing time and costs, they rendered the boundary between the urban and rural spaces much more fluid and effectively brought places and people together. Port-cities with railroad connections developed earlier and faster globally and assumed the role of “gateway cities”.413 It is beyond question that railroads revolutionized the city’s access to the interior, brought vitality to agriculture, manufacturing, and trade, provided farmers new opportunities to market their products, and created new employment in agricultural, commercial, and service sectors. However, railroads did not alter the rhythms of agricultural production and transform the natural environment by themselves. The region’s mountains, valleys, rivers, and lakes become a means of subsistence only if those who inhabit a place know how to benefit from them. As American cultural scholars Wayne Franklin and Michael Steiner propose, natural and built settings do not determine people’s lives or the course of history. These physical factors set “boundaries” to and supply “possibilities” for human activity.414 In this respect, railroads gave both urban and rural residents who sought their fortune in agribusiness, the opportunity to develop ideas about how 412

Cronon, 93. For example, for the “gateway rivalry” between Chicago and St. Louis and the attainment by the former of the gateway city role, see: idem, 295-310. 414 Wayne Franklin and Michael Steiner, “Taking Place: Toward the Regrounding of American Studies,” in Mapping American Culture, Franklin and Steiner, eds. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press), 5. 413

145

they would use them to change, modify, and interfere with the natural environment according to their needs and interests. Concurrently with the construction of railroads, Western Anatolian farmers and producers created a new vision of the future for their region based on their knowledge and experience. This conceptual transformation was as revolutionary as the railroads themselves. From the mid-nineteenth century on, the traditional dichotomy between city and country all but disappeared and a more diversified and dynamic economy oriented toward international markets emerged in the whole region as a result of a sequence of human actions on the environment. This chapter traces the transformation of the physical and human landscape in Western Anatolia and emergence of a symbiotic relationship between city and country, in which both were mutually dependent. It focuses on a series of major environmental transformations intricately intertwined with demographic, economic, and technological processes. Although agricultural production was much more diverse in the region in a given time period, it interprets these transformations through distinct stories of cereals, cotton, and figs and raisins, the crops that defined the overlapping processes of reclamation of land and expansion of the labor force into the reclaimed lands. These crops were the principal export commodities and had a large share in the overall trade of Western Anatolia; no single crop dominated the export market. Next to the principal crops above, farmers grew a variety of crops –usually on the same plot- such as fruits, olives, valonia and madder roots, and shifted back and forth among them. The fact that Western Anatolian agriculture was by no means a monoculture and farmers had the motivation and openness to adapt different farming practices and changing economic and ecological conditions was perhaps the main secret behind the success of Izmir as the gateway between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, the major link that bound the fertile lands of Western Anatolia and global markets into a single economic system. 146

Reclaiming the Land: The Spread of Cereal Cultivation

Cereals are the primary sources of carbohydrates or energy in most human diets. People consume a wide range of foods such as bread, pasta, noodles, cakes, and biscuits, as well as distilled and fermented drinks such as whisky and beer, that are made from cereals. Cereals also feed most of the domestic animals upon which humans depend for food, transport, and clothing. The wide adaptability of cereals, their relatively high yields and ease of growing and storage have encouraged farmers to grow them in almost all regions of the world, from the Central Asian steppes to the sub-Saharan savannas. The most common cereals are wheat, barley, oats, rye, rice, and maize. In colder regions, oats and rye are dominant, whereas in temperate climates wheat and barley predominate. In the tropic, on the other hand, farmers mostly grow rice and maize. Western Anatolia, with its temperate climate, fertile soil, and resources, was a suitable region for cereal cultivation. For thousands of years, the waters of the Gediz and Büyük Menderes rivers and the adjoining streams have brought minerals and nutrients from the mountains and highlands to the fertile plains. The waters of these two rivers have occasionally overflowed and become exposed to the sun before they seeped into soil and added fertility to it. In the absence of starchy food such as rice and potatoes, peasants have grown cereals in this region for millennia. They preferred cereals over pulses and other crops which have less energy content. Even though the climate and the soft, sandy soil with a mellow surface make the region an ideal place where all sorts of cereals can be grown, before the mid-nineteenth century agricultural production was still dependent on the vagaries of nature, on the one hand, and the highly unpredictable markets of Europe on the other. The area devoted to the cultivation of cereals remained small until that time. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, part of the arable land, which had been abandoned with the advance of the Little Ice 147

Age, was improved by the efforts of local ayans and brought under cultivation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; yet, a number of problems and challenges, such as low population density, scarcity of labor and capital, poor transport and communication networks, lack of modern tools and implements, and the devastating impact of diseases such as malaria on daily life made the improvement of land difficult and impeded agricultural growth.415 There was a general expansion of cereal crops in Western Anatolia after the 1840s. Factors that influenced the expansion of the area devoted to cereal crops in the mid-nineteenth century are many and varied. In the first place is a large-scale population movement in Western Anatolia that began in the 1830s and continued in an increasing stream until the end of the empire. As analyzed in detail in the previous chapter, a growing number of migrants from the Aegean islands and Morea returned to the region in the aftermath of the Greek War of Independence. To them were added war refugees from the Caucasia and Crimea in the second half of the nineteenth century. Concurrently, energetic efforts were made to sedentarize the nomadic and seminomadic groups, numbering thousands of individuals. The government had high expectations from both the resettlement of migrants and refugees and the sedentarization of nomads. The government presumed that newcomers and returnees would alter the agricultural life and landscape through cultivation of vast tracts of lands that had been hitherto left uncultivated or empty, and would thereby contribute to the growth of production and trade.416 For the government, the sedentarization of the nomadic populations and the development of agriculture were important also in terms of increasing agricultural and

415 416

Tabak, 231. Terzibaşoğlu, “Land Disputes and Ethno-Politics,” 163.

148

tax revenues. The government connived at “the reclamation of lands and agricultural clearings by nomads” because they “made them liable to state control and taxation.”417 In this period, structural changes in the global economy forced capitalist countries, primarily Britain, to take steps to liberalize the economy and to remove strict controls on imports and exports. An outstanding event that contributed to agricultural production in Western Anatolia was the Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention in 1838. Followed by similar agreements with other European states, the 1838 convention was an important step for the general restructuring of the Ottoman economy, as it removed protectionist measures on exports and imports and opened Ottoman lands to foreign merchants.418 Within the four decades following the convention, exports from Izmir increased threefold and imports more than six-fold, and the majority of exports were agricultural products.419 Raw cotton, wool, opium, valonia (acorn), madder root, scammony, wax, silk, dried fruit, olive oil, wheat, corn, and flour were the principal export articles from Izmir to Europe, while metals such as iron, tin, and lead, colonial goods such as coffee and sugar, ready-to-wear textiles, and food staples were imported from Europe.420 The signing of the 1838 convention contributed significantly to the improvement of agricultural productivity in Western Anatolia, as it facilitated the export of agricultural goods and raw materials, and this improvement involved the expansion of cereal cultivation. With the convention, grain farmers and others obtained the freedom to sell their produce at the highest available price, and this made cereal agriculture a profitable enterprise.421 A further improvement in the fortunes of grain farmers took place in the

417

Selçuk Dursun, “Forest and the State: History of Forestry and Forest in the Ottoman Empire” (Ph.D. Diss., Sabancı University, 2007), 38. 418 For the impact on the 1838 Anglo-Ottoman Trade Convention, see Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “Implementation of the 1838 Anglo-Turkish Convention on Izmir’s Trade: European and Minority Merchants,” New Perspectives on Turkey 7 (Spring 1992): 91-112. 419 Démétrius Georgiadès, Smyrne et l’Asie mineure au point de vue économique et commercial (Paris: Lévy, 1895), 188-89. 420 MacGregor, Commercial Statistics, Vol. II, 100 and Georgiadès, 190-94. 421 “Corresponding respecting the Commercial Treaty with Turkey of August 16, 1838, Session 2,” AP (1841), 13.

149

following decade, when restrictions on grain imports were completely abolished in Britain by the Importation Act of 1846. The act repealed all Corn Laws in Britain and permitted British and foreign merchants to import cereal grains to Britain from any country in the world. This allowed a free hand for the expansion and consolidation of British interests in the Ottoman Empire and made cereals a much-demanded commodity in European markets. By greatly increasing the demand for grain, the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 opened up new fields to cultivation and channeled the cereals produced in surrounding farmlands of Izmir to European markets. Another event, the Crimean War in 1853-56, also had a great impact on the expansion of cereal cultivation in the region. During the war, demand for cereals from the Ottoman Empire increased incredibly because the war interrupted Russian grain shipments to Europe and the cheapest and the most efficient way to feed the soldiers of Allied armies fighting in the Crimean peninsula was to import grain from the Ottoman Empire.422 Western Anatolia was one of the regions where efforts were made to extend cereal cultivation. In the mid-nineteenth century, farmers, especially agronomads that the Ottoman government finally settled, newcomers from the greater Mediterranean, and war refugees from Caucasia and Crimea, were part of the processes and contexts in Western Anatolia in which economic and ecological changes occurred. These groups were affected by changing economic and environmental conditions, while undertaking initiatives for the improvement of land and imposing their own agricultural practices on their altered environment. They gave priority to cereals because, even with simple machinery, cereals were easy to plant and grow and could be easily stored for comparatively long periods. Newly settled areas began as regions of subsistence farming, upon which commercial farming was superimposed by the means of capital, labor, and technology. Production beyond the needs of the farmer and his family became prevalent and more and more farmers found it profitable to produce for the 422

Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914 (London: Methuen, 1981), 111.

150

market as means of transportation developed and commercial networks were carried to all parts of the region. From the mid-nineteenth century on, the area under cultivation of cereals rapidly increased by thousands of acres, and in turn, swamps, prairies, woodlands, and forests shrank rapidly. There are no statistics available indicating the area brought under cereal cultivation; however, a doubling in the volume of cereal trade from the 1840s on testifies to the scale and extent of land reclamation for cereal crops. In 1839, cereal exports from Izmir valued £72,688, most of which went to Britain. In the following two decades, the amount increased steadily and reached £158,534 in 1857.423 Besides Britain, Austria, France, Malta, and Tuscany also imported cereals produced in Western Anatolia through the port of Izmir.424 The observations of European visitors who traveled through the region in the second half of the nineteenth century also attest to the spread of cereal cultivation into areas that had previously been occupied by marshes and swamps. For example, in the decades preceding the reclamation of land in valleys and plains, Selçuk (Ayasuluğ) was a notoriously unhealthy place for humans, where malaria prevailed, and a wetland in which mosquitoes, frogs, lizards, and snakes thrived. Its fate changed gradually when a group of nomads became sedentary and established a permanent camp there. According to the testimony of Western observers, the new permanent settlers of the Selçuk region drained swamps by digging canals and ditches and started cultivating cereals.425 “The country between Smyrna and Ephesus,” wrote the American politician William Henry Seward, who visited the region in 1870, “is highly cultivated with cereals and fruits.”426

423

“Commercial Tariffs and Regulations,” AP, Part 8 (July 14, 1843), 98-102. “Commerce of the Ottoman Empire,” The Merchant’s Magazine and Commercial Review 28, no. 3 (Feb. 1, 1853): 294-301. 425 Helen W. Brand, Over Arab Lands (Dundee: Dundee Advertiser Office, 1867), 139. 426 Oliver Risley Seward, ed., William H. Seward’s Travels around the World (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1873), 617. 424

151

Even though producers gradually became committed to the demands of capitalist rationality and the imperatives of the market economy, the period of transition from subsistence economy to production for the market was not without its problems. Cereal cultivation was a profitable but risky business, because the forces of nature could be as destructive as they could be beneficial. Whereas timely rains and warm temperatures could help cereal crops grow, frosts, storms, droughts, or insect attacks could destroy them. During times of drought, moreover, the government could issue a decree and abolish the shipping of cereals abroad to prevent food shortages and inflation in the cities. In such times, the government could increase patrolling on the Mediterranean coast to prevent smuggling and contraband trade. For example, in 1845, the shortage of crops in Western Anatolia caused the price of bread to increase by fifty per cent and required the government to control the grain trade in Western Anatolia much more carefully.427 British merchants’ attempt to export twelve tons of grain from Menemen was prevented, and the produce was sent to Izmir for local consumption.428 Despite government controls and patrolling, merchants and smugglers carried on a profitable contraband trade in cereals in Western Anatolia, which was very suitable for it thanks to its indented coastline. The difficulty of controlling the Aegean coast was more obvious during the years of the Crimean War, when the Ottoman government focused its attention and resources on its northern borders, making contraband in Western Anatolia ventures easier. Polyculture, or intercropping, in which different crops and plant species were mixed on the same piece of land, was the most common practice Western Anatolian farmers employed to mitigate the climate-related and biological risks of monocropping, as well as

427

“Bread, etc.,” AP (Jan. 29, 1846), 37. HHS, Türkei, V-1-2, “Chabert to Stürmer,” Nov. 26, 1845 ctd in Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 213.

428

152

vulnerability to price fluctuations in global and regional markets.429 In this way, farmers eliminated the risk of “putting all their eggs into one basket” and ensured that they could get enough produce for themselves and some surplus for the market. Polyculture, on the other hand, reduced the need for fallow and made it easy for large tracts of land to be brought under cultivation. For example, a detailed report published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1857 noted that the Arapçiftliği farm near Bergama contained 10,000 acres of land, of which 4,000 were devoted to polyculture. Emmanuel Baltazzi, the landowner, of European origin, parceled it out in small lots of thirty, sixty, and ninety acres and leased it to farmers, who cultivated cereals in one half and garden crops in the other half. In the farms under cultivation, there were 2,000 acres of wheat, 500 acres of barley, 100 acres of vines, and 2,100 acres of garden crops. The farmers received the seed from the landlord and were obliged to pay one-tenth of the produce in kind as a land tax to the government and one-half as a tribute to the landlord. In one of the two villages in the property, large stone storage buildings that were “capable of containing fifty thousand bushels of wheat” were constructed.430 Before the construction of railroads and improvement of existing land routes in Western Anatolia, the cultivation of cereal crops and their distribution to the market were limited to a relatively narrow area on the shore. Because merchants and camel drivers could profit more from low-bulk, high-value goods such as wool, cotton, mohair yarn, silk, and opium, they preferred the more valuable goods over grain. For them, it was never feasible to transport bulk agricultural goods such as wheat and barley by means of camels and horses, if

429

Polyculture and intercropping provided the basis of subsistence agriculture across the Mediterranean basin for much of the history of the region. Even after the transition from subsistence to market economy, farmers and producers followed the pattern to mix different crops on the same plot. 430 “A Visit to a Model Farm in Asia Minor,” Fraser’s Magazine 55, no. 325 (Jan. 1857): 59-61. See also: Hilal Ortaç, “Batı Anadolu’da Büyük Toprak Sahibi Levanten: Baltacı Manolaki,” Ege Üniversitesi Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 25, no. 1 (July 2010): 319-36.

153

travel time was more than fifteen hours.431 In 1845, Richard W. Brant, the British consul in Izmir, described the impediments to trade caused by the high cost of transportation: The cost of the carriage of bulky articles from a distance is now so great, that the growers who are rarely possessed of sufficient capital to defray the expense of transport, have no alternative, but to sell their produce on the spot at shallower prices they can obtain from speculators, who profit of such a state of things to obtain it at the lowest possible rates.432 Indeed, the high cost of carriage by camel, which was the only means for the transport of cereals before the opening of the railroads, was a major barrier to market integration. Mostly crops the settlers on the coastal areas produced could have a cash value in the market, and thereby become a commodity. In cereal-growing districts in the interior, the producer limited “his crops to his own wants and consumption.”433 In case of surplus, cereals were consumed directly by humans on-site or in the neighboring towns and villages, or by animals as fodder. Exports could become available when road conditions permitted. Indeed, F. Wakefield’s report from Afyonkarahisar in 1857 confirms the physical road conditions that prevailed in Western Anatolia. “The harvest of grain for two years, over and above the necessary consumption, is still in the stores here and at Sandıklı,” he wrote, “all owing to the high price of transport.”434 The development of railroads towards the end of the 1860s provided the region with vast improvements in the movement of the bulky low-rated goods like cereals. Even though cereals ceased to be a major export item by the time railroads were extended into the interior, because of the prominence given to other agricultural products such as cotton, figs, raisins, olives, and tobacco, reduced transportation costs nonetheless rendered cereal cultivation for domestic consumption a profitable business. Railroads, by integrating cereals fields into urban markets, not only reduced the loss of crops in the fields considerably, but also brought bread 431

Tevfik Güran, 19. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Tarımı (Istanbul: Eren, 1998), 71. TNA, FO 195/241, “Report as to the Measures to Improve the State of the Country around Smyrna,” Apr. 25, 1845. 433 Michelsen, 187-88. 434 Stephenson, 7. 432

154

shortages in Izmir and other coastal towns to an end. For example, previously it had never been worthwhile to sell wheat produced at Uşak, which is only a hundred miles away from Izmir. In the 1870s and 1880s, the districts beyond Uşak became the granary of Izmir, when railroads made a vast territory in the interior accessible in a relatively short time.435 In 1885, the annual production of wheat was 53.7 million gallons in Aydın province and 29.3 million gallons in Saruhan. However, this produce did not attract foreign merchants and was almost entirely absorbed by the local markets.436 In this period of agricultural expansion, the concerted efforts of European merchants based in the city and their agents in the country were exerted not only to commercialize, but also to modernize and mechanize agriculture.437 For the traditional crops of the region, such as olives, figs, and grapes, there was not much necessity for using agricultural machinery. However, the reclamation of land and the growing and harvesting of cereals required substantial use of modern tools and implements. The adoption of modern agricultural technology for cereal cultivation was, therefore, notable for its role in helping people accelerate the process of land reclamation. Better tools and implements allowed the extension of cultivation into new areas and changed the natural landscape into an agricultural landscape. Before the introduction of modern agricultural tools and implements, the harvesting of cereals had always been done by hand, using simple tools. It was a difficult, lengthy, and laborintensive operation and involved three major processes. The first process was reaping, the action of cutting or harvesting the grain by a sickle or scythe. The reaped grain stalks were gathered into sheaves and tied with a string of straw. The second process was threshing, the separation of grain from stalks and husks. It was a long and laborious process and again, 435

Owen, The Middle East, 113. Rougon, 93. 437 For information on the mechanization of agriculture in the Ottoman Empire, see Faik Bey, “Türkiye’de Ziraat Makineciliğinin Tarihçesi,” Ziraat Gazetesi 5, no. 8 (Aug. 1934): 235-41; idem, “Ziraat Makineciliğinin Tarihçesi,” Ziraat Gazetesi 5, no. 9 (Sept. 1934): 267-70; and Murat Baskıcı, “Osmanlı Tarımında Makineleşme: 1870-1914,” Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi 58, no. 1 (2003): 29-53. 436

155

everything was done by hand. And finally, winnowing, or cleaning, was to separate grain from chaff. In this process, farmers had to rely on the help of the wind to separate lighter chaff from the heavier grain. All these processes, cutting, gathering, threshing, winnowing, and packing, took enormous time and at this speed, farmers could grow and harvest cereals only for their own consumption. Men worked from dawn to dusk but even this was not enough to finish the work, so their wives and children helped them with the gathering of grain stalks.438 From the 1860s, foreign merchants were deeply interested in the commercialization of agriculture, and they imported several machines and implements from Europe and the United States.439 They took advantage of direct steamship connections from European ports to Izmir and the railroads that connected the city to the interior to introduce the first iron plows, reapers, thrashers, winnowers, and cornshellers to local farmers.440 Grain farmers were receptive to modern agricultural machinery and benefited from it to reduce the cost of production. The success of cereal growing was much more indebted to modern agricultural machinery than the traditional tree crops of the region were. After the 1870s, with the increased number of tools and implements imported from abroad, cereal farmers exerted much greater control over their environment and increased the area under cultivation of cereal crops. What really revolutionized cereal production in the region and increased the output, however, was the introduction of the combine harvester, a horse-drawn machine invented by Cyrus McCormick in the United States in 1831. The combine harvester performed multiple operations and reduced the time and labor invested in each of these operations. Firstly, it cut

438

Agricultural Machinery in the Several Countries (Washington D.C: Government Printing Office, 1885), 707. Donald Quataert, “Agricultural Trends and Government Policy in Ottoman Anatolia, 1800-1914,” Asian and African Studies 15 (1981): 78. 440 Agricultural Machinery, 709-10 439

156

the standing grain crop and tied the stems into sheaves. Then it threshed out the grain from the straw. Finally, it cleaned the grain and discharged it into bags or sacks. David W. Offley was a member of a merchant family of Pennsylvanian origin, who had been residing in Izmir since 1811.441 In May 1883, Offley imported the first “Daisy” combine harvester from McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago and with his brother made his first trial with the machine in Ulucak near Kemalpaşa: Many people followed me to the place of trial, all with the impression, as they had seen English machines tried, that these would not have a better fate. Arrived at, the spot, I gave the charge of one of the Daisy reapers to my brother, Mr. John H. Offley (who carefully studied, previous to this, the directions furnished me by Messrs. McCormick for running the reaper). After carefully examining, that everything should be right and in order, he started the reaper. The machine was drawn by two horses brought down from my farm accustomed to draw American plows and carts. It did the work very well, to the general satisfaction of all farmers, although the field had not been properly harrowed. I explained to them that they must harrow well their fields if they desire to have the reaper work still better. They promised to do so for next year. The reaping was continued for about two hours, when we left for town, amid the cheers, of the crowd.442 The Offley Brothers’ initial tour was a success; they sold four reapers and introduced the combine harvester to the region.443 In the following years, David W. Offley increased his commercial activities in the vicinity of Izmir, and through his agents he controlled the distribution of agricultural machinery for cereal cultivation into the interior. Reapers and iron plows, and to a lesser extent steam plows, threshers, horse-drawn rakes, seeders, and seed drills were among the agricultural machinery Offley and other merchants imported to the region in the late nineteenth century. Harvesters were known to exist in some farms in Manisa in the 1880s.444 “Within the last twenty years over 60,000 American plows had been imported

441

David H. Finnie, Pioneers East. The Early American Experience in the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 26. 442 NARA, T 268/Roll 11, U.S Consular Records for Istanbul, Turkey, Letters from Consulate at Smyrna, “W. E. Stevens at Smyrna,” (May 9, 1884). 443 Finnie, 14-15. 444 Rougon, 74.

157

and sold,” reported Ernest L. Harris, the American consul in Izmir, in 1907, confirming the steady supply of American agricultural technology to the interior.445

Spinning the Land: Cotton Growing

Cotton has been grown in Western Anatolia for a long time. Cotton imported from Izmir was used as raw material in Britain as early as 1586, and “it was to the cotton wool imported from Cyprus and from Smyrna that,” as Alfred Wood claimed, “the Lancashire cotton industry owed its foundation.”446 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Britain continued to be a net importer of Turkish cotton; however, as France became the dominant economic power in the Eastern Mediterranean in the eighteenth century, French merchants became much more active in the cotton trade. Cotton produced in the vicinity of Izmir was a principal import for France throughout the eighteenth century. Cotton’s share of Izmir’s exports to France reached a peak of seventy-two per cent in 1788.447 The cotton trade was badly affected by the wars that broke out after the French Revolution. Shipments of cotton from Izmir became “a hazardous speculation, as during the French occupation of Egypt many cargoes sent from Smyrna to Europe were seized by privateers and sold in Malta.”448 As a result, the cotton trade declined considerably at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1814-15, for example, the annual exports of cotton were about 70,000 bales.449 During the years of the Greek War of Independence, there was no effort to expand cotton growing in the region, which brought the cotton trade to a near halt. In the 1840s, cotton grown in the region did not exceed “8,000 bales a year, of which not more than 2,000 to 3,000 bales were

445

NARA, U.S Consular Records for Istanbul, Turkey, Letters from Consulate at Smyrna, “Harris at Smyrna,” (May 1907) qtd. in Quataert, “Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia,” 165. 446 Alfred C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1935), 74. 447 Frangakis-Syrett, “The Trade of Cotton and Cloth,” 97-99. 448 “The Supply of Cotton,” The Economist 946 (Oct. 12, 1861): 1131. 449 Ibid.

158

exported, the balance required for home consumption.”450 In 1846, cotton exports hit a historic low of 600 tons or 2,400 bales.451 Besides the disruptions caused by wars, there were a number of reasons for the decline in cotton cultivation in Western Anatolia. Firstly, cotton was a labor-intensive crop that required many people to work collaboratively in the field. It had to be picked from the stalks carefully and cleaned before it was packed into sacks for transport by camels. There was some sort of agricultural labor in the region but it was inadequate for the commercialization of cotton production. Much serious effort to increase population in rural districts and to organize agricultural labor was needed. Secondly, the primitive conditions under which the cleaning and packing of cotton were carried out prevented cotton from becoming a commercially significant crop. The process of removing the seeds out of the cotton had long been done either manually by farmers or by means of simple cotton gins. “The native cotton gins are very clumsy,” wrote Charles Blunt, the British consul in Izmir, complaining of their slowness in 1863.452 Thirdly, the low profit margin for producers, given high transport costs, posed an obstacle to the growth of cotton trade. As explained previously in detail, the lack of railroads in Western Anatolia was a major drawback, which made it difficult and costly for merchants to bring bulky items to the city for export. The necessity to develop infrastructure and construct railroads to promote cotton cultivation had been recognized by foreign merchants much earlier, but in 1859, Macdonald Stephenson, the director of the Izmir-Aydın Railway Company, was still pointing out the difficulty and cost of camel transportation with some exaggeration. “This wretched state of things,” he wrote, “stops enterprise in the cultivation of the boundless fresh land; the improvement of the sample of cotton and other produce, the importation of better implements and modes of culture, as now, with the most frugal habits,

450

Ibid. Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 233. 452 TNA, FO 195/711, “Blunt to Bulwer,” Aug. 1, 1863. 451

159

the producer’s profit all goes to the camel owner.”453 And finally, the British merchants’ preference for American cotton, which was better in quality and cheaper in price, had caused to a significant decline in cotton cultivation in the region.454 Even though the climate and soil were suitable for cotton growing, cotton cultivation did not spread much beyond the fields of small-scale farmers in the absence of trade networks to introduce know-how, capital, and technology to the region. Interest in cotton cultivation in Western Anatolia revived during the Tanzimat Era. In 1840, Ceride-i Havadis, a newspaper owned by a British merchant in Istanbul, published a number of articles and propagated the idea that the country was very suitable for cotton growing and that there was a ready and profitable market for Turkish cotton exports in Britain.455 In the 1850s, the merchants in Liverpool, Manchester, and Lancashire made a great effort to stimulate cotton cultivation. In 1852, Thomas Bazley, the president of the Chamber of Commerce in Manchester, warned the cotton merchants of the coming war in America and the adverse consequences it might have on the cotton industry in Britain.456 Five years later, Bazley took a further step and suggested the formation of a cotton league for “promoting and encouraging the growth of cotton in every part of the world.”457 In April 1857, a group of cotton merchants and dealers in Britain formed the Manchester Cotton Supply Association (MCSA). The association, foreseeing the problems with the American cotton supply, immediately started looking for supplementary supplies of cotton. Western Anatolia was one of the regions that the MCSA found favorable for the future of the cotton market.458 British

453

Stephenson, 8. Cotton Culture in New or Partially Developed Sources of Supply: Report of Proceedings (Manchester: Manchester Cotton Supply Association, 1862), 52. 455 Ceride-i Havadis, July 31, 1840 and Sept. 25, 1840. 456 William Otto Henderson, The Lancashire Cotton Famine 1861-65 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934), 36. 457 Proceedings of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Annual General Meeting, Feb. 9, 1857. 458 For the impact of the American Civil War on cotton production in Western Anatolia, see Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 88-95 and idem, “The Cotton Famine and its Effects on the Ottoman Empire,” 454

160

merchants, before investing in cotton, wanted to make sure that cotton produced in Western Anatolia would supersede the inferior Indian cotton. In pursuit of this objective the association sought to improve the quality of Turkish cotton, which “had so far deteriorated that the small quantity exported to France and England was chiefly used for candlesticks, its short staple rendering it unprofitable for manufacturing purposes.”459 Sixty bags of goodquality American seed were shipped from Liverpool in 1858, and on arrival at Izmir they were immediately distributed to the fields in the vicinity of the city.460 Although locusts caused local devastation in that year, the land under cotton cultivation was extended and total production reached 330,000 pounds. A year later, more American seed arrived in Izmir, which the authorities delivered them to the interior. As a result, the output increased tremendously, reaching 7.5 million pounds in 1859.461 Satisfied by this success, the MCSA sent an expert to Izmir to investigate the possibility of increasing cotton production in Western Anatolia. In his reports, the MCSA expert underlined the high taxes and wrote that under the existing tax system it was unrealistic to expect a considerable increase in the output of cotton. He also noted the vigorous efforts made by the mercantile and other interests in Turkey for the removal of these barriers and expected that the construction of the railroad between Izmir and Aydın would open up an extensive cotton-growing region in Western Anatolia.462 Another report prepared by the Ottoman government in 1861 pointed out that export taxes, coupled with high transportation costs, rendered shipment of cotton from areas that were situated more than a hundred kilometers away from Izmir uneconomical.463

in The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, ed. Huri İslamoğlu-İnan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 160-9. 459 Isaac Watts, The Cotton Supply Association: Its Origin and Progress (Manchester: Tubbs & Brook, 1871), 51. 460 TNA, FO 78/1391, “Blunt to Malmesbury,” Apr. 20, 1858. 461 TNA, FO 78/1533, “Blunt to Russell,” Apr. 30, 1860. 462 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 79. 463 BOA, İRA.MV, no. 20162, 1861.

161

The eruption of the American Civil War in the spring of 1861 rendered Western Anatolia more significant for the cotton industry in Britain. The cotton industry in Britain geared up to increase the supplies of raw cotton from the region, especially when the blockade of southern ports by the United States Federal Navy became more effective in the years 186263 and the consequent interruption of imports of raw cotton from North America imperiled the British cotton textile industry.464 Efforts to keep the trade alive failed and a shortage of cotton took hold in Lancashire and Cheshire, the principal textile towns in Britain. As a result of this occurrence, which became popularly known as the “Cotton Famine,” hundreds of cotton mills were closed; their owners fell into financial trouble; and thousands of unemployed workers crowded the cities.465 During the years of the Cotton Famine, the MCSA increased its efforts to regenerate cotton cultivation in Izmir and its vicinity. In 1861, the association distributed improved seed, this time from Egypt, which “produced a staple of cotton surpassing the New Orleans cotton.” Cotton export from Izmir to Britain increased six-fold in one year, from 10,000 bales to 60,000 bales.466 While efforts to promote cotton cultivation were largely pursued by British merchants, the Ottoman government took an important step in 1862 and issued an imperial decree granting privileges to cotton growers. According to the decree, the government promised to give any piece of wasteland “rent-free and tax-free for five years, if devoted to the cultivation of cotton,” and also allowed the “import of machinery for the same purpose free of duty.”467 By the imperial degree, the government also decided “to provide and distribute cotton seed, especially American,” and to translate pamphlets with practical instructions into the Turkish language “for the information of all engaged in cotton growing, 464

In 1861, the American South furnished 71 per cent of cotton imported by Europe. Britain alone had a share of 65 per cent of the cotton in Europe. Douglas Antony Farnie, The English Cotton Industry and the World Cotton Market, 1815-1896 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979). 142. 465 Ibid., 141-45. 466 Cotton Culture, 52. 467 John Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1866), 406; Henderson, 46; and Nizamettin Turgay, Türk Ziraat Tarihine Bir Bakış (Istanbul, 1938), 128-29.

162

upon the best modes of cultivation.”468 The authorities distributed 2,249 pounds of American and 44,500 pounds of Egyptian seed in 1862 and 6,215 pounds of American and 305,500 pounds of Egyptian seed the following year.469 The value of cotton seed distributed within the jurisdiction of Izmir equaled 30,000 Kuruş470; the fund was allocated from the imperial budget.471 The efforts of Ottoman government and British merchants proved successful and delivery of foreign seed helped revive cotton cultivation in Western Anatolia (Table 4).

Table 4: Cotton exports from Izmir (1857-1876)

YEAR

QUANTITY (tons)

1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876

600 11,293 3,962 11,887 5,505 16,695 6,955 9,418 6,753 7,833 10,817 10,996 10,418 11,462 12,246 14,983

Source: Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 128

468

Watts, 57. TNA, FO 78/1760, “Blunt to Russell,” May 23, 1863 and TNA, FO 195/771, “Blunt to Bulwer,” Aug. 1, 1863. 470 Kuruş (or piaster) was an Ottoman currency unit. One pound equaled to 15 kuruş in the nineteenth century 1898. Şevket Pamuk, “Evolution of the Ottoman Monetary System,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, vol. 2: 1600-1914, ed. Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 968. 471 BOA, A.MKT.MHM, 258/88, Apr., 1, 1863. 469

163

The cotton boom of the 1860s, which was propelled by changes in the global economy, coincided with the government’s campaign to resettle diverse groups of migrants and refugees and to sedentarize nomadic groups. The government’s resettlement and sedentarization programs seemed to have the desired outcomes, and the pace of settlement and reclamation of vast tracts of land in the coastal and inland plains of Western Anatolia increased after the modification of existing laws and regulations that hindered or obstructed the right to private property. In this respect, the new Land Code in 1858 provided a legal framework for the use of agricultural lands and encouraged private ownership of miri (crown) lands.472 With the code, the government granted large expanses of land to individuals with tapus (title deeds). However, the distribution of title deeds to individuals should not be regarded as a means of securing private property rights. With a title deed, the government did not imply unconditional property rights, but transferred tasarruf (usufructuary) rights to those willing to cultivate the land and pay taxes on it.473 It permitted the institution of allodial rights over miri lands, and to ensure that the land should be worked, the code provided that the land return to the state if the owner failed to cultivate the land for three consecutive years.474 In other words, the government provided some sort of motivation to the settlers to encourage agricultural production upon lands that were granted to them. In the 1860s, with the change of land use patterns in favor of cotton, large tracts of land that had long been left empty were brought under cotton by the newcomers to the region, while part of the land that had previously been devoted to cereals and other crops also turned into cotton-producing fields. High quality Egyptian and American seed revolutionized cotton 472

“Arazi Kanunname-i Hümayunu,” Düstur 1. Tertib, Vol. I (7 Nisan 1274/21 Apr. 1858); The Ottoman Land Code, tr. F. Ongley, ed. Horace E. Miller (London: W. Clowes and Sons, 1892); and Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “Türk Toprak Hukuku Tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1274 (1858) Tarihli Arazi Kanunnamesi,” in Tanzimat (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1940), 301-52. 473 Tosun Arıcanlı, “Property, Land, and Labor in Nineteenth-Century Anatolia,” in Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East, 128. 474 Huri İslamoğlu, “Property as a Contested Domain: A Reevaluation of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858,” in New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East, ed. Roger Owen (Cambridge, MA: Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, 2000), 32.

164

growing in Western Anatolia, and in the vicinity of Izmir the total area under cotton between 1861 and 1862 increased four times in a single year.475 According to the American consul Gabriel Bie Ravndall, the land under cotton in his consular jurisdiction increased tenfold between 1861 and 1865.476 Cotton was widely cultivated in the Kırkağaç, Akhisar, Bergama, Turgutlu, Manisa, and Menemen districts along the valleys of the rivers of Bakırçay and Gediz, as well as in the vicinity of Bayındır, Tire, Ödemiş, Aydın, and Denizli in the Küçük Menderes and Büyük Menderes valleys.477 The dry, loose, and salty soil was very favorable for the growth of cotton in these districts. Moreover, they were not more than sixty miles distant from the Aegean Sea and there was enough precipitation that cotton could be grown without irrigation.478 Near Aydın, there were nearly 17,800 acres of cotton sown in 1863, while the amount had been less than 4,500 acres the preceding year.479 One farmer near Subucak alone sowed 4,400 acres of cotton. In Turgutlu, about 5,000 acres of cotton were sown in 1862, another 1,500 acres were added in the following year.480 “More than five times the quantity of land has been prepared and sown in 1863,” wrote the British consul in Izmir, “than what was brought under cultivation in 1862.”481 In the consular district of Izmir, 29,000 acres of land were devoted to cotton in 1863. The number increased to 53,750 acres the following year.482 Cotton cultivation was initially concentrated on the coastal plains. As the century progressed, the boundaries of cotton were defined by the human as much as by the nature of the plant itself. The thriving cotton trade and free seed furnished by the government 475

TNA, FO 78/1760, “Blunt to Russell,” May 23, 1863. Gabriel Bie Ravndall, Turkey: A Commercial and Industrial Handbook (Washington D.C: Government Print Office, 1926), 97. 477 Georgiadès, 12 and “Baumwolle, Schafwolle, Ziegenhaar, und Seide als Exportartikel Smyrna’s,” Österreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient (1882): 170. 478 Issawi, 246. 479 In that year, all cotton seeds sent from the government to Aydın Sanjak were planted successfully; BOA, A.MKT.MHM, 265/56, June 9, 1863. 480 TNA, FO 78/1760, “Blunt to Russell,” June 23, 1863. 481 TNA, FO 195/771, “Blunt to Bulwer,” Aug. 1, 1863. 482 “Circular to Her Majesty’s Consuls in the Ottoman Dominions regarding Cotton Cultivation” AP, Vol. 57 (1865), 805. 476

165

encouraged the producers in the interior as much as those living on the coastal valleys, to attempt cultivating cotton. Farmers and producers eagerly adopted the plant even in the most depleted areas of Western Anatolia, for they saw it as a quick way to wealth. For example, in Denizli, where cotton had not previously been a cash crop, the land devoted to its cultivation increased significantly.483 In Kütahya, a city where cotton was not known before, cotton seeds were distributed on the initiative of the district governor Asıf Paşa.484 In short, cotton became the predominant cash crop, stamping a unique character upon the economic and environmental life of Western Anatolia. The population explosion of the mid-nineteenth century led to a tremendous expansion of the labor force in the agricultural sector. By the 1860s, cotton growers and laborers were no longer a small fraction of the agricultural labor force. From bankers, merchants, intermediaries, landowners, and sharecroppers to newly settled nomads and seasonal laborers, the expansion of cotton cultivation provided a source of income to thousands of urban and rural residents in the region. The establishment of companies that supplied cotton producers with money, technology, and know-how accompanied the spread of cotton growing. The earliest effort to raise the output by resorting to modern methods was the formation of the Asia Minor Cotton Company in Manchester in 1856.485 In its charter, the founders described the company’s goal as “to stimulate a largely increased production of improved cotton by the introduction of superior kinds of seed, the best agricultural implements, and the most approved machinery for cleaning and baling material.”486 For this goal, the company opened branches and agencies in Izmir and nine other towns in the Western Anatolia.487 A few years later, the Ottoman Cotton Company, which offered courses and instructions and observed the consequences of modern 483

TNA, FO 78/1760, “Biliotti to Blunt,” June 29, 1863. BOA, A.MKT.MHM, 255/35, Feb. 7, 1863. 485 TNA, BT 31/206 (629c). 486 The Banker’s Magazine 227 (Feb. 1863): 18. 487 The Manchester Commercial List 1867-1868, First and Second Years (London: Estell & Co., 1867), 21 and The Joint Stocks Companies’ Directory for 1867 (London: Charles Barker & Sons, 1867), 691. 484

166

methods of cotton cultivation in the region, came into existence.488 The success of the Asia Minor and Ottoman cotton companies led to the formation of several other companies “for purchasing, cleaning, and preparing the cotton in the districts where it was grown, which contributed largely to encourage its production.”489 Prior to the 1850s, the conditions under which the ginning, cleaning, pressing, and packing of cotton were carried on quite primitive, which had prevented cotton from becoming a commercially significant crop. Locally-available cotton gins, powered either by animals or water turbines, were simple and slow. An average gin could produce only 12-14 pounds of clean cotton in a day.490 Another problem was related to the compressing of cotton bales. Cleaned cotton was packed into bags by hands and feet, and the result was that the dimensions and weight of each bag were different.491 The weight of a bale could vary from 2.5 to 3 kantars (250 to 300 pounds), depending on the “skill of the presser.”492 The output of cotton bales within the consular jurisdiction of Izmir kept increasing, from 15,000 bales in 1861 to 42,000 in 1862, and lacking a cotton compress, it gradually became a problem to catch up with production and also to find room to store the cotton bales.493 Foreign merchants who had an interest in the cotton business were the first to recognize these problems and agreed that modern methods of cleaning, packing, and processing of cotton should be introduced to keep its supply steady. In the early 1860s, two British merchants, James Gout and James Aldrich, asked for permission from local authorities to put up cotton gins in Izmir and other cotton-growing districts. Upon obtaining permission,

488

Times (London), March 31, 1863; TNA, BT 31/778, “The Ottoman Cotton Co. Ltd.”; TNA, BT 31/819 (629c), “The Asia Minor Co. Ltd.”; and TNA, BT 31/819 (424c), “The Asia Minor Co. Ltd.” 489 Watts, 59. 490 TNA, FO 195/711, “Blunt to Bulwer,” Aug. 1, 1863. 491 Georgiadès, 13. 492 “Circular to Her Majesty’s Consuls in the Ottoman Dominions regarding Cotton Cultivation” AP, Vol. 57 (1865), 806. 493 TNA, FO 195/711, “Blunt to Bulwer,” Aug 1, 1863.

167

they ordered seventy cotton gins from Britain.494 Gout’s first cotton gins, which were installed in the factory he set up in the Dolma Han in Izmir, were worth £15,000.495 Gout continued to take advantage of the fast-growing cotton market and invested in other towns in Western Anatolia. In 1863, he opened factories in Manisa, Aydın, Menemen, Bayındır, and Tire. In his ten factories in Western Anatolia, Gout had a total of 266 ginning machines, all powered by steam engines. Gout’s steam-driven machinery allowed him to keep the lion’s share in Izmir’s cotton business in the 1860s. His share was 7.1 per cent in 1862, 15.8 per cent in 1863, and 21.8 per cent in 1864.496 In the process of commercialization of cotton production, foreign merchants and dealers established in Western Anatolia cultivated intricate connections between cotton producers and purchasing and processing enterprises. They built a new corporate network and took a shared responsibility to collect cotton crops from the fields and prepare them for exportation to European markets. In a few years, the number of foreign merchants investing in cotton gins and cotton pressing mills increased to six. T.B. Rees set up a factory where he ginned cotton coming from his own estates in the vicinity of Izmir; Hadkinson, Merrylees & Co. owned a pressing mill in Izmir; and R. Wilkin opened a cotton-cleaning factory in Bayındır.497 In the factory of H. Vedova in Aydın, there were “22 Platts A.A. gins, a first class horizontal high pressure engine, a cornish boiler, an independent feed engine, and heating apparatus” with an estimated value of £3,000.498 During the 1860s, cotton cleaning and ginning operations developed in all major towns in Western Anatolia, but Izmir was the indisputable center of packing and processing of cotton. There were plenty of steam packing establishments in Izmir and, like steam-powered flour mills, they enabled merchants to

494

TNA, FO 78/1760, “Blunt to Russell,” May 23, 1863. TNA, FO 195/797, “Statement by Consul Cumberbatch on the Bankruptcy of J. Gout,” May 6, 1866. 496 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 155-59. 497 Ibid., 155. 498 Ibid. 495

168

prepare bales of cotton coming from the interior for shipment. The mechanism in these establishments could press the lumpy and uneven cotton into evener bales with an average weight of 407 pounds.499 “They would be useless in the interior” wrote Charles Blunt, the British consul in Izmir 1863, “for the bales must be opened when the cotton is brought to market for sale.”500 The registration of real estates and properties in the names of Ottoman subjects was a common strategy and a way around the bureaucracy at that time, because the government did not allow foreigners to buy property until 1868. For example, the second factory Gout established in Manisa in 1863 was registered in the name of Mehmed Karamizraki Efendi, a local notable, and the third factory in Aydın was registered in the name of an influential Armenian.501 Despite the growth of cotton production and the increase in the number of factories, the lack of an adequate land transport network to move and warehouses to store raw cotton was still a big problem in Western Anatolia in the 1860s. Primary and secondary roads in the region were unsuitable for wheeled traffic, and camels were the only means for conveying goods from the countryside to the city. It was clear that the cotton trade would not reach its full potential unless the Izmir-Aydın and Izmir-Turgutlu railroads were opened to traffic. “The transport has been much delayed owing to the bad state of the roads,” wrote Robert William Cumberbatch, the British consul in Izmir, in his annual report in 1864, adding that nearly half of the cotton crop remained in the districts.502 Even though the demand for Turkish cotton in Lancashire began to fall with the end of the American Civil War a year after Cumberbatch’s remark, the short-lived cotton boom became a major motive for the completion of the Izmir-Aydın railroad, which was long delayed. The opening of the IzmirAydın and Izmir-Turgutlu railroads in 1866 enabled transportation costs from the hinterlands 499

Rougon, 97. FO 195/711, “Blunt to Bulwer,” Aug 1, 1863. 501 Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 156-57. 502 TNA, FO 78/1888, “Smyrna Annual Report 1864,” June 1865. 500

169

to the city to be considerably reduced and secured the continuation of cotton exports from Western Anatolia to Europe. The value of cotton exports increased from 157 million Francs in 1856 to 662 million Francs in 1880.503 Moreover, these railroads expanded the agricultural frontiers of Western Anatolia and promoted settlement in previously unoccupied areas of the region. In conclusion, the spread of cotton cultivation was the second stage of transformation in the environmental history of Western Anatolia and the distinctive feature of the region’s integration into the world economy. From the 1860s on, the growth of the labor force caused by the natural increase of population and migrations from other regions, the development of urban-rural commercial networks, the adoption of new agricultural practices, and the improvement in infrastructure and market access all together encouraged new cultivation activities and stimulated interest in cotton production on a more organized and commercial basis. “Nothing could be more striking and promising than the activity and earnestness displayed,” opined Isaac Watts, the secretary of the MCSA, adding that “cotton seemed likely to contribute largely to the regeneration of Turkey.”504 Truly, the expansion of cotton cultivation was an important stage, an advancement that allowed humans to gain more control over nature, overcome its limitations, and harness its advantages for profitable economic endeavors. The revival of cotton cultivation and the accompanying spread of a merchantdriven economy epitomized the shift from low to high-bulk commodities in Western Anatolia and Izmir’s growth as the gateway city of the region.

503 504

Georgiadès, 131. Isaac Watts, 57.

170

Conquering the Hills and Valleys: Fig and Vine Growing

Viticulture and viniculture have played a significant role in Anatolia’s economy and culture since antiquity. Grape and wine production in the region started with the Greeks and expanded with the Romans. During the Ottoman period, vineyards were all over the empire, but in Anatolia the main centers of cultivation were Izmir and Bursa, where farmers grew grapes and produced raisins for local and export markets.505 In the Ottoman Empire, the state occasionally issued orders to stop Muslims from consuming grapes as wine and as distilled liquors such as rakı and legally allowed only Christians and Jews to buy, sell, or drink alcoholic beverages. However, such restrictions were largely ineffectual and all communities in the empire consumed alcohol.506 Şıra (grape juice) and pekmez (grape molasses) were also popular and were consumed widely both in Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Raisin exports became a matter of real importance in the city’s trade in the second half of the nineteenth century, but it was much earlier that raisins from Western Anatolia was consumed in Europe. Between 1784 and 1790, an average of 7,400 tons of raisins were sent to Britain alone.507 Among the recipes of an English cookbook published in 1792, there was a recipe for “Smyrna raisin wine.”508 From London or Liverpool, raisins also found their way to the United States. In 1785, a Boston merchant advertised that he had “a few casks of Smyrna raisin for sale.”509

505

Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 264. The production and consumption of alcohol was banned for Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. Non-Muslims, however, were tolerated and given permission to produce everything from wine to rakı and consume them at homes or in meyhanes (taverns), to which Muslims also went, despite the prohibitions, as we know from the fact that they were repeatedly punished for doing so 507 Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 264-65. 508 Francis Collingwood and John Woolams, The Universal Cook and City and Country Housekeeper (London: R. Noble, 1792), 338. 509 Leland J. Gordon, American Relations with Turkey, 1830-1930: An Economic Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1931), 41. 506

171

Three varieties of raisins produced in the region were sultanas, rosakias (red raisins), and black raisins.510 Some sources also mention the production of currant, or the Corinthian raisin, in the Foça district.511 The best quality rosakias and black raisins were grown in Karaburun, followed by the second quality grown at Urla and Foça, and the third at Çeşme.512 Rosakias and black raisins were used mainly for winemaking and were therefore chiefly exported to France.513 Merchants preferred the seedless sultana raisins, which constituted more than ninety per cent of the entire production in Western Anatolia. People consumed only a small portion of the sultana raisins produced in the region fresh or used them in bakeries; the rest of the crop was shipped to Britain, Austria, Hungary, and Germany.514 The method of drying raisins was easy. Once collected, grapes were arranged on trays or spread on mats and left in the sun to dry. After nine to twelve days, they needed to be turned over and kept in the sun three or four more days.515 Oil was sprinkled on them “to prevent evaporation of the moisture, and also to give the fruit, when packed and shipped, a better chance of preservation.”516 Every year towards the end of July, before other varieties, sultanas appeared in the market. Rosakias and black raisins from Urla, Foça, and Çeşme followed sultanas in the middle of September. Finally, the Karaburun rosakias and black raisins arrived at the end of September or the beginning of October. In other words, the three varieties of raisins arrived in the market “in an inverse order to their quality.”517 The fig, on the other hand, has been cultivated in Western Anatolia since ancient times and grows in every part of the region, but predominantly in the Büyük Menderes and Küçük Menderes valleys, where “climatic conditions, soil, and conformation of terrain appear to be 510

Ravndal, 104. “The Production of Smyrna Raisins,” Journal of the Society of Arts 31 (Nov. 2, 1883): 1035-36. 512 Ibid. and Ravndal, 104. 513 Rougon, 79; “The Production of Smyrna Raisins,” 1036; and Walter Bauer, Foreign Production, Trade, and Government Aid in the Raisin and Currant Industry (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1933), 40. 514 Rougon, 79. 515 Djevad Sami Bey, “The Smyrna Fig and Raisin Industry,” Levant Trade Review 16, no. 1 (Jan. 1928): 20. 516 Richard Witherby, “Report on Dried fruits,” Journal of the Society of Arts 21 (June 13, 1873): 585. 517 “The Production of Smyrna Raisins,” 1036. 511

172

especially favorable for fig production.”518 According to one commentator, the best quality of fig came from Erbeyli near İncirliova, which literally means “the valley of figs” in Turkish.519 Fig trees were carefully planted and the ground was “dug and hoed from four to six times during the summer.”520 They gave two crops; the first one was early in the summer and the second one was in the autumn. The chief harvest season was the latter, continuing through the months of September and October.521 The Smyrna fig had two varieties; “bardacık,” or “hurda,” a small fig with a thin skin, was largely consumed locally, while “lob,” or “sarı lob,” or “eleme,” was mainly exported because it preserved its flavor and quality after drying.522 Hurda figs were carried in “yellow bags of ordinary sacking,” while goat-hair bags were used for the transport of the eleme figs.523 The process of drying figs had a long tradition because it was an effective way to keep them fresh. When the figs were ripe, they shriveled and dropped to the ground. Farmers collected them and dipped them in boiling salt solution, which was composed of three ounces of salt to one gallon of water. Then the figs were spread on wooden trays or mats and placed in the sun to dry. After a week or ten days, they were left in the shade for further curing.524 There is no reliable information about when dried figs from the region penetrated European markets; however, it can be assumed that the Europeans started consuming them widely in the eighteenth century. As early as the 1780s, the “Smyrna fig” was listed amongst the “goods imported into the port of London.”525 The expansion of fig and grape growing was the third stage of breakthrough in the environmental history of Western Anatolia, which complemented and overlapped with the first and second stages; intensification of human settlement and land use through cereal

518

Ravndal, 103. “The Smyrna Fig Trade,” Journal of the Society of Arts 54 (Apr. 27, 1906): 634. 520 Gwynne Harris Heap, “Fruit Culture in Turkey,” United States Consular Reports 41, no. 5 (1884): 738. 521 Ibid., 739. 522 The Smyrna Fig Harvest,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 80 (Dec. 1, 1889), 292 and Ravndal, 103. 523 “The Smyrna Fig Harvest,” 292. 524 Djevad Sami Bey, 18. 525 Times (London), Dec. 22, 1785 and Jan. 30, 1786. 519

173

growing and expansion of land reclamation and commercial agriculture through cotton cultivation. The last decades of the nineteenth century witnessed fig trees and vines being commercially grown almost everywhere in the region, from the edge of the waters of the Mediterranean to the hilltops. What the banana meant for tropical lands was for Western Anatolia the fig and grape. The cultivation of these two crops allowed humans to extend the range of their agricultural activities and encouraged them to reclaim hilly land. The clearing of rocky terrain and forests on the hillsides in order to plant fig trees and vines was a major occupation in this period because a considerable percentage of abandoned land was found in highlands and remote areas. “The best results are obtained from vineyards planted in good soils on the hillsides,” noted Gwynne Harris Heap, the American consul in Istanbul, “the next being those situated on undulating tablelands, and afterwards from those planted in the valley.”526 As long as the settlers did not cut forests reserved exclusively for the shipyard or for imperial hunting, the government did not take any action against agricultural clearing.527 Because the timber from Western Anatolia was not suitable for shipbuilding, there was no obstacle for vine growers to penetrate forests areas within reach of rural settlements. “As you proceed the mountain rises more and more abruptly from the plain, which is fertile and well cultivated,” wrote Henry John Van Lennep, who traveled from Izmir to the interior in 1870, and added, “vineyards, mulberry plantations, and fields of grain, extend to the distant hills.”528 Some two decades after Van Lennep’s visit, William Cochran remarked the following: “About six years ago the hills behind the village of Bournabat, a few miles out of Smyrna, were covered with jungle, and useless, they are now, to a considerable extent, clothed with vines, belonging, in every instance, to families who were once the poorest peasants.”529

526

Heap, 727. Dursun, 38. 528 Henry John Van Lennep, Travels in Little Known Parts of Asia Minor, Vol. II (New York: Van Lennep, 1870), 303. 529 Cochran, 217-18. 527

174

Cochran’s notes on reclamation give further detail about the expansion of viniculture in the region: Each person makes a selection on those hills, and during his leisure hours, after his usual employment, clears away the bush, which sells for firewood at a remunerative price. When the land is free, it is planted with vines, the same routine being repeated season after season until the vineyard is as large as he and his family can manage. As the planted areas are successively completed, a government officer measures the land occupied, and the peasant pays at the rate of one medjid per doloon – a doloon being forty square paces – when he becomes the proprietor, and in a surprisingly short time little independent revenues of £30 to £50 a year are realized.530 Fig producers also gave close attention to the hills and mountains because production was directly related to the number of trees planted per acre and the yield on hillsides was higher than in lowlands. While in mountainous areas as many as a hundred fig trees per acre could be planted, the number was eighty in the valleys and sixty-four in the fields.531 Similar to vine growers, fig producers transformed forests into fig gardens to meet the rising demand of dried figs from Western Anatolia in European markets. The expansion of viticulture and horticulture across the region from the 1860s on was closely related to the demographic, economic, and technological developments analyzed in the previous chapter. As we have already seen, there was a steady growth of population and a dramatic change in agricultural production in the mid-nineteenth century, which resulted in the opening of new lands to cereal and cotton cultivation. In the years between the 1840s and 1860s, a great effort was made to extend the area under cultivation by clearing, cleaning, and reclaiming the land on the edge of towns, villages, pastures, and forests to create fertile and productive farmland. Towards the end of the century, the density of human settlement and activity reached to a level at which competition for fertile agricultural lands and other natural resources grew to be more intense and had to be regulated by imperial laws and regulations. In this process, authorities found it necessary to redraw the boundaries of pastures, forests, 530 531

Ibid., 218. By “doloon” the author refers to “dönüm,” or “dunam,” a unit of land area equal to 0.247 acres. Djevad Sami Bey, 17.

175

and common grazing lands to prevent conflicts among settlers. The “ill-defined proprietorship rights of the vakıf administrations on landed property,” as Terzibaşoğlu has described, “were all in a process of erosion to the benefit of individual title and use, a transformation from communal to individual rights.”532 The French historian and journalist Abdolonyme Ubicini made interesting observations on how people acquired property rights over land: The waste and unenclosed lands (adiyet or mouaet), which had not been included in the partition at the time of the conquest, or such as through the neglect of the occupants had been suffered to lie fallow, became the property of any individual, Musulman, or otherwise, who, to borrow the expression of the law, restored their soul to them. So, also whoever plants a tree in a waste spot becomes the owner of that tree, and of five feet of ground all around it.533 In the earlier years of opening up, following the free trade treaties of 1838-41, cereals and cotton furnished the impetus for the expansion of agriculture and became the major agent of economic and ecological change throughout Western Anatolia. As we have seen, new settlers of Western Anatolia cleared the land and cultivated cereals for the market more widely than before, because even by simple machinery, cereals were easy to plant and grow and could be easily stored for comparatively long periods. The Land Code of 1858, by allowing individual ownership in land, further stimulated the rehabilitation of landscape. It was supportive of the government’s efforts to maximize its agricultural revenues through settlement and reclamation.534 The 1858 Land Code was also important with respect to vine and fig cultivation, for it provided some sort of motivation for rural residents to extend the boundaries of agricultural areas beyond the low-lying plains of the Gediz, Küçük Menderes, and Büyük Menderes rivers. The new Code allowed individuals to claim mevat arazi (abandoned lands), if they brought them under cultivation or planted them with trees within

532

Terzibaşoğlu, “Land Disputes and Ethno-Politics,” 158. For disputes over land use and the transfer and redefinition of property rights in land in the late-nineteenth century Western Anatolia, see also idem, “Landlords, Refugees, and Nomads: Struggles for Land around Late-Nineteenth-Century Ayvalık,” New Perspectives on Turkey 24 (Spring 2004): 51-82 and idem, “Eleni Hatun’un Zeytin Bahçeleri: 19. Yüzyılda Anadolu’da Mülkiyet Hakları Nasıl İnşa Edildi?,” Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar 4 (Fall 2006): 121-47. 533 Abdolonyme Ubicini, Letters on Turkey, Vol. I (London: John Murray, 1856), 258. 534 Dursun, 38.

176

three years.535 The pace of reclamation throughout the empire was impressive in the aftermath of the 1858 Land Code; seventy per cent of cultivable lands in the empire became mülk (private property) in the decade following the Code, while miri lands were reduced to a mere five per cent.536 The 1858 Land Code is a turning point in the history of land reclamation in Western Anatolia. From an agroecological perspective it started a new period when human impact on the environment accelerated and intensified because it redefined property relations that “radically altered the allocation of land as a source.”537 By the Code, the land was divided into smaller plots and titles were granted to individuals with the intention of creating a denser peasant population. The majority of the small-scale land-holding peasants in Western Anatolia were the Greeks.538 Although there are no definitive statistics regarding the number of small proprietors in Western Anatolia, we can deduce from consular reports that the number of small proprietors increased with respect to the growth of agricultural population in the region following the 1858 Land Code. For example, Robert William Cumberbatch, the British consul in Smyrna, reported that in Aydın province the cultivable land in the vicinity of towns and villages was “generally divided into very small tenements, which the proprietors cultivate on their own account.”539 In this process, the increased labor force needed for the opening up of new arable land, which had been abandoned previously due to the difficulty and cost of clearing, was largely drawn from migrants and refugees, as well as newly settled nomads. The changes in global markets that made the cultivation of cereals and cotton less profitable served the purpose of fig and grape growers in Western Anatolia. The region’s 535

Tabak, 211. Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire, 91. 537 İslamoğlu, 34. 538 Sia Anagnostopoulou, Mikrá Asía, 19os ai.-1919: oi ellênorthódoxes koinótêtes: apó to Millét tôn Rômiôn sto ellênikó éthnos (Athens: Ellenika Grammata, 1988), 199-204, qtd in. Themopoulou, 89. 539 “Consul Cumberbatch to Earl Granville,” Nov. 4, 1870, AP, Vol. 68 (1871), 847. 536

177

cereal exports had already been in decline since the 1860s because of the re-introduction of cotton as cash-crop. The collapse of global cereal prices as a result of the return of American cereals to European markets in the 1870s precipitated the decline in cereal exports in the region. The subsequent recovery of cotton exports from the United States after the end of American Civil War further pushed the regional economy in Western Anatolia towards new agricultural crops, of which vines and figs were the most important. The shift from cereals and cotton towards fig and grape growing, however, was gradual and cautious. Farmers never gave up cultivating cotton and cereals completely for two reasons. Firstly, the urban population was growing continuously and cereals and cotton produced in the hinterland always found buyers in the urban market. Western Anatolian farmers supplied cereals that the bakers in Izmir needed and cotton for the domestic textile industry. Secondly, the new Land Code required a certain amount of land left for animal grazing to provide cities and towns with animal products. Demand for meat and dairy products rose higher during conditions such as war, famine, or disease. For instance, in 1855 there was a “reserve depot of 2,000 cattle” in Izmir for shipment to the Allied forces in Crimea.540 A year later, British authorities made another contract with Whittall, British merchants in Izmir, for the supply of cattle to the British army in the Crimea.541 In the 1870s, the outbreak in Europe of phylloxera, a grapevine disease, was perhaps an unexpected development that also triggered grape production in Western Anatolia and made viticulture an important branch of agriculture.542 The disease had appeared in the United States in 1863, arrived in France in the 1870s, and from there it spread further to the rest of Europe.543 Phylloxera, except a few areas, “destroyed virtually all Europe’s vines” and forced 540

“Third Report from the Select Committee on the Army before Sebastopol,” House of Common Papers; Reports of Committees (Apr. 20, 1855), 90 and “Fifth Report from the Select Committee on the Army before Sebastopol,” House of Common Papers; Reports of Committees (June 18, 1855), 16. 541 “Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the supplies of the British Army in the Crimea,” AP (1856), 63. 542 Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire, 91-92. 543 Quataert, “Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia,” 217.

178

European wine producers to procure grapes elsewhere.544 In Western Anatolia producers responded to the decrease in cotton prices after the end of the American Civil War and to European demand for grapes after the onset of phylloxera by replacing cotton with vines. For example, in the 1880s, a German investor “had clothed several hundred acres of the mountain slopes between the beautifully-situated village of Koukloudjah and Smyrna with vines for wine manufacture.”545 Changes in consumption habits and tastes due to rising incomes also spurred the spread of fig and grape growing in the region. In the period stretching from the end of the Crimean War to the start of the First World War, Europe enjoyed a relatively peaceful and prosperous interlude. Overall wealth and prosperity increased through expansion of overseas trade and improvements in transport and communication. Foods that could not be produced locally in Western Europe and were once luxury items became rapidly semi-luxuries and even staples for mass consumption. Figs and raisins were such food items, when previously the majority of consumers hardly knew them “except at Christmas time.”546 Their consumption filtered down through society thanks to commercial growth, lowering of transportation costs, and reduction of duties on fruit. When figs and grapes became highly demanded commodities in European markets in the second half of the nineteenth century, they became the top priority of farmers in Western Anatolia. Railroads were a major catalyst for vine and fig growing in Western Anatolia in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The earlier extension of railroads into the interior occurred during the years when vineyards in France were devastated by phylloxera disease. With the improved facilities of transportation and the legal arrangements that allowed the sale 544

James Simpson, Creating Wine: The Emergence of a World Industry, 1840-1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 36. 545 William Cochran, Pen and Pencil in Asia Minor; or Notes from the Levant (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1887), 211. 546 Witherby, 585.

179

of agricultural land to foreigners, vine growing assumed increasing importance in previously untapped areas along the railroad lines. The principal vine-growing districts were located along the Izmir-Turgutlu railroad in the Gediz valley. Cities and towns along the Izmir-Aydın railroad line and its extensions such as Nazilli, Bozdoğan, Söke, Karacasu, Çine, Ödemiş, and Bayındır, on the other hand, became the principal fig growing districts in the last decades of the nineteenth century.547 Figs, when collected in gardens, were brought to the nearest railroad station in sacks. Special care was taken with these gunny bags and they were never packed on top of one another. In wagons, there were shelves constructed for the figs, “so there is [was] absolutely no danger of pressure or jolting.”548 Hurda figs, which had been consumed locally before, became an export item at the turn of the twentieth century thanks to the ability of the Izmir-Aydın Railway Company to transport them.549 In terms of the volume of raisins produced, Nif and Manisa were the most important districts, raising half of the entire output.550 Quataert has argued that twenty per cent of all vineyards in the Ottoman Empire were in the vicinity of Izmir in the 1870s. They produced 50,000 tons of raisins, half of which was exported and the other half was for the domestic market.551 He has further estimated that the number of vineyards in Aydın province had risen tenfold by the 1870s to respond the growing demand from France.552 According to one estimate, in 1882 the land under vine in the province was over 350,000 acres.553 Yet, the total area covered with vineyards is hard to estimate precisely in the absence of reliable statistics. The extension of railroads and the subsequent interest of foreigners in vine and fig growing increased the value of vineyards, orchards, and fig gardens, too. The government was 547

Djevad Sami Bey, 19. “The Fig Industry of Smyrna,” Journal of the Society of Arts 57 (Nov. 20, 1908): 753. 549 Cihan Özgün, “İzmir ve Artalanında Tarımsal Üretim ve Ticareti (1844-1914)” (Ph.D. Diss., Ege University, 2011), 328. 550 Djevad Sami Bey, 19. 551 Quataert, “Agricultural Trends and Government Policy, 72. 552 Quataert, “Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia,” 217. 553 “Trade and Commerce of Smyrna,” Journal of the Society of Arts 30 (Aug. 4, 1882): 915. 548

180

aware of this interest and began selling crown lands along the railroad lines to foreign investors and merchants. In 1880, the average price of arable land near market towns was £6 per acre and in thinly populated parts less than £1. The same amount of land with vineyards could be bought and sold for £10 and with orchards for at least £16.554 Firmin Rougon, the French consul in Izmir, reported in 1885 that 1,000 to 1,500 acres of land that was suitable for the cultivation of vineyards was on sale in the vicinity of the Izmir-Aydın railroad line.555 Raisin production in Western Anatolia, despite fluctuations, rose steadily in the second half of the nineteenth century and, according to the reports of U.S consuls in Izmir, reached its climax in 1884 with 95,000 tons of raisins (Table 5). Firmin Rougon, the French consul in Izmir, calculated that the amount of raisin exports from September 1885 to August 1886 exceeded 33,000 tons and from September 1886 to August 1887 40,500 tons.556 Gustav Eisen claimed that the Western Anatolian region was in second place in Europe in the world’s raisin production in 1889 and supplied about thirty-eight per cent of raisins in the world markets.557 In that year, as Rougon calculated, raisin exports reached 56,000 tons.558 Britain had the largest share of raisin exports from Izmir, followed by Austria, German, and France. Black raisins from Karaburun and Urla were especially favored in the markets in Britain and its colonies.559 These small grapes contained a large proportion of saccharine, and therefore they were “much valued by British wine-makers.”560 The production of wine from black raisins of Western Anatolia was very popular in France during the years of phylloxera disease. The value of black raisins exported into France was 642,000 Francs in 1873; the figure increased to 11,041,560 Francs in 1879 and 14,486,840 Francs in 1880.561

554

“Tenure and Produce of Land in Smyrna” Journal of the Society of Arts 28 (Nov. 12, 1880): 919. 28. 556 Rougon, 80. 557 Gustave Eisen, The Raisin Industry (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker and Co., 1890), 177. 558 Rougon, 78. 559 Witherby, 586. 560 Ibid. 561 “Smyrna raisins,” Journal of the Society of Arts 1554 (Sept. 1, 1882): 964. 555

181

Table 5: Raisin exports from Izmir (1844-1884)

YEAR HARVESTED 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884

PRODUCTION (tons) (Eisen) 6,000 to 8,000

19,000 48,000 31,000

27,000

PRODUCTION (tons) (Kasaba) 7,433 2,843 3,565 2,357 2,630 2,117 4,312 8,058 15,049 13,984 7,899 4,607 5,614 4,821 11,828 6,510 11,249 6,870 9,491 7,455 8,181 4,825 4,888 13,150 9,804 27,534 27,860 39,981 38,812 31,497 40,438 45,925

75,000 49,000 95,000

Source: Eisen, 176-77, and Kasaba The Ottoman Empire, 126

182

In the second half of the nineteenth century, together with grapes and raisins, figs became one of the leading export items of Western Anatolia by the 1870s (Table 6).562 Gwynne Harris Heap, the U.S consul in Istanbul, recorded the arrival of 54,000 camel loads of figs, each camel carrying four hundred pounds, in October 1882. “Fifteen years before that time,” he said, “not more than half that amount was recorded for the whole season.”563 Heap noted that in 1881 in one night only, “no fewer than 195,000 barrels, cases, bags, boxes, drums, and baskets of figs and raisins” were shipped from Izmir.564 Heap’s calculation seems to be realistic, because the French consul had noted the 1861 crop as 23,000 loads and 1862 as 35,000.565 The value of figs exported from Izmir quadrupled in four decades and exceeded 30,000 tons, i.e., 140,000 loads, per annum in 1908.566 More strikingly, the increase in fig prices by seventy per cent between 1891 and 1908 made fig growing a profitable enterprise in Western Anatolia.567 The most important purchasers of Western Anatolian figs were the British, Germans, and Americans.568

Table 6: Annual average quantity of fig exports from Izmir (1876-1908)

YEARS 1876 – 1880 1881 – 1885 1886 – 1890 1891 – 1895 1896 – 1900 1901 – 1905 1906 – 1908

EXPORTS (tons) 8,642 12,370 --13,982 21,107 30,450

Source: Quataert “Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia,” 301.

562

Quataert, “Agricultural Trends and Government Policy,” 71-72. Heap, 738. 564 Ibid., 739. 565 Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 261. 566 Quataert, “Agricultural Trends and Government Policy,” 72. 567 Quataert, “Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia,” 300-1. 568 Heap, 739. 563

183

With the growth of the fig industry, the operations related to their picking, processing, packing, and delivery expanded and diversified. Fig merchants and producers employed more and more people in each of these steps of the fig trade. From the end of June through July, when figs ripened, bekçis (watchers) were stationed in the garden, who kept guard day and night.569 The fig harvest took place between late August and early-November and generally lasted about six weeks.570 During the time of harvest, inhabitants of the neighboring villages poured into the fig gardens. Men, women, and children worked from sunrise to sunset; they gathered figs and piled them into baskets.571 The fig harvest was a time of intense labor and a good opportunity to earn an income. A worker earned an average of fourteen cents a day, but during the time of harvest this amount could increase to a half a dollar.572 After the harvest was completed, the next process was fig drying, a process that lasted about a week in the hot September sun. When dried, the figs were divided into first, second, and third qualities.573 Afterwards, figs were packed into bags and handed over to devecis (camel men), whose functions “are [were] much wider than their name would suggest.”574 A deveci was more than a camel man and his duty was not complete “till a sale has been actually effected, the money received, and the figs handed over to the purchaser.”575 Whether the deveci was just a carrier of product or also an intermediary between the producer and purchaser is not clear. In some sources, Jews and Armenians are referred to as brokers or intermediaries, who, for a commission or fee, could act on behalf of a foreign merchant.576

569

“The Smyrna Fig Harvest,” 289. “Cultivation of the Fig in Turkey,” Journal of the Society of Arts 29 (Dec. 31, 1880): 100 and Ravndal, 103. 571 “The Smyrna Fig Harvest,” 289 and “Der Feigencultur- und Feigenhandel Smyrna’s,” Österreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient (1881): 14. 572 “The Smyrna Fig Harvest,” 290. 573 “Cultivation of the Fig in Turkey,” 100 and “Der Feigencultur- und Feigenhandel Smyrna’s,” 15. 574 “The Smyrna Fig Harvest,” 291. 575 Ibid. 576 “Cultivation of the Fig in Turkey,” 100. 570

184

The arrival of the first figs in the city was always celebrated as a popular festival, in which fig-laden camels were “followed by a throng of shouting people to the fruit market.”577 This excitement was due to the fact that “a large number of poor families in Smyrna obtain their total livelihood during the fig season.”578 After the purchase, the figs were brought to warehouses or packing establishments belonging to the merchants and emptied out on the floor in a square heap. There, women and children, who specialized in stringing figs, were employed as laborers. They flattened each fig with their fingers “to render it soft, and give it the required oblong form.”579 On the heap was a row of low baskets, which were used to separate the figs of first and second quality. The undersized, tough, or spotted figs, which were at least ten per cent, were thrown in a separate heap for domestic consumption.580 The figs were then laid on long benches occupied by the practiced packers. They packed the figs swiftly and dexterously in boxes that lay in front of them.581 When the packing was completed, finally, the boxes were again passed on to the women, who “complete the process by placing laurel leaves between the upper rows before the final nailing down and polishing off by the carpenter.”582 Fig packing, however, was not new to the second half of the nineteenth century. European travelers had observed the business of fig and raisin packing much earlier.583 For example, Godfrey Levinge had noted in 1839 the arrival of “strings of loaded camels,” which were “piled with figs.” Camels deposited their loads in the courtyards of merchants’ houses, he observed, adding, “where a number of women and children, who are squatted round the heaps, proceeded to pick the figs from the branches and leaves; then they pack them into drums, sprinkling each separate layer with sea water.”584 What was new to the 1870s and 1880s was that the old-fashioned style of ‘drum’ packing was replaced by a newer 577

“Smyrna Figs,” Times (London), Oct. 3, 1888. Ibid. 579 “Cultivation of the Fig in Turkey,” 100. 580 Ibid., 100-1. 581 Ibid., 101. 582 Ibid. 583 MacFarlane, 64-65 and Madden, 147-48.. 584 Levinge, 218-19. 578

185

mode of packing figs in rows and layers explained above. This mode, called “pulled” packing, was preferred by merchants because it enabled each fig to give a larger appearance and improved the chance of marketing in Europe.585 Figure 3: Camels carrying figs and raisins to warehouses near the new quay

The manner of packing raisins also had to meet the requirements of purchasers. The best quality rosakias were packed in wooden boxes of thirty pounds, except for Russia, where they were delivered in barrels of 250 pounds each. The cheaper sultana raisins were sent to Austria in boxes of twelve pounds and to Britain of twenty-two pounds. They were sent to Germany and the Netherlands in cases of thirty and sixty pounds. Black raisins, on the other hand, were exported in large barrels of 370 pounds each.586 Furthermore, consumer preferences in Europe played a role in the variety of raisin produced in the region. In the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a “decided trend toward the producing of

585 586

Witherby, 586. Heap, 731.

186

sultanas” because of the increased demand in Europe for the seedless type of raisins.587 In the years 1900-1904, with an annual average of 34,700 tons, sultana raisins constituted seventy per cent of the total raisin exports from Izmir. This figure increased to 43,500 tons and eightysix per cent in the years 1906-1910.588 The expansion of viticulture and horticulture was definitely an integral part of the process of Western Anatolia’s integration into the market economy and is demonstrated by the railroads, stations, warehouses, and packing units found in Izmir and its hinterland. Figs and grapes attracted foreign capital investment and technology, promoted trade, and stimulated the movement of people across the region. The expansion of fig and grape cultivation created seasonal employment for thousands of men and women in the city and countryside. In short, fig and grape growing across Western Anatolia had a profound impact on the region’s human and natural landscape. After cereals and cotton, figs and raisins transformed valleys, marshlands, and hilltops into the physical basis for Izmir’s growth and development in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Conclusion

From the 1840s on, a dynamic market-oriented economy emerged and integrated the city and countryside into a unified space in Western Anatolia. The expansion of market mentality and the promising agricultural potential in the region drew capital and labor and changed the attitudes of farmers toward nature, as they started looking upon it as a resource to be exploited for profit. Slowly but steadily, farmers transformed the Western Anatolian countryside by draining marshes, reclaiming land, and displacing forests and woodlands by 587 588

Bauer, 41-42. Ibid.

187

fields and gardens. Farmers had been growing cotton, silk, grains, fruits, vegetables, and olives for hundreds of years, but on a limited scale. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, a growing human population in the countryside provided the labor to clear and till the land, harvest the crops, and pack and move them to the city. In its role as a gateway city to and from the interior of Western Anatolia, Izmir drove land conversion and resource extraction in its immediate hinterlands. The resident rural population and newcomers competed for the fertile lands in Western Anatolian river valleys. The productivity and control of these groups over resources was further increased when credits became available at favorable terms in the second half of the nineteenth century. The improvement of agricultural techniques and methods, the introduction of agricultural machinery, the issuing of a new set of legal arrangements and the adjustment of existing ones, the organization of labor, and the flow of credits and resources in a networked infrastructure provided the individuals and groups involved in agribusiness with a greater opportunity to produce in larger quantities and better qualities of agricultural output from existing sources. Eventually, commercial agriculture spread out far and wide to support populations, which by the end of the nineteenth century were larger and more sedentarized than ever before. In other words, demographic, economic, and technological transformations of mid-nineteenth century Western Anatolia brought urban and rural people together in a single effort to integrate the fertile river valleys into global networks of production and trade. The mid-nineteenth century observed some major transformations in the economic and environmental history of Western Anatolia because demographic, economic, and technological changes improved the human capacity to modify the environment. The first stage of this transformation was the expansion of cereal crops. With the immense supply of human and material resources, thousands of acres of what had previously been abandoned or uncultivable land was prepared for cereal cultivation. “King Wheat,” as Tabak has described 188

it, became a significant export crop of Western Anatolia by the 1850s and “the principal agent, which both made and hastened the pace of reclamation of the plains.”589 The second and overlapping stage of transformation started in the 1860s, when producers gradually shifted from cereals towards cotton, a commercial crop that was adapted to the region’s climate and was in high demand in European markets. In a very short time, as we have seen, “King Cotton” came to dominate the Western Anatolian economy, as cotton cultivation spread rapidly across the region. It fueled the expansion that occurred between the 1840s and 1860s and replaced cereals as a major export item, while cereal cultivation continued but was almost entirely confined to the domestic market thereafter. In the expansion of both cereals and cotton, the government’s successful resettlement and sedentarization policies played an important role. Cereals imports from Western Anatolia fell sharply with the return of wheat from the Black and Baltic seas to European markets with the end of the Crimean War. The importance of Western Anatolian cotton, similarly, decreased when the transatlantic trade regained its previous level when the American Civil War ended. In exchange, fig and grape production became an extensive industry in Izmir and its hinterland in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. From the 1870s on, these two crops were together a dynamic force promoting the opening up of hitherto unexploited areas of Western Anatolia to commercial agriculture. Rural residents reclaimed large tracts of wasteland for planting figs and vines, while the quantity of figs and raisins annually exported amounted to thousands of tons as the introduction of railroads, formation of commercial networks, and development of processing, packing, and shipment operations facilitated their production and trade. Cereals, cotton, and figs and raisins were the crops that defined the overlapping processes of reclamation of land and expansion of labor force to reclaimed lands. They were principal crops and had a large share in overall trade of Western Anatolia; however, none of

589

Tabak, 239.

189

them dominated the export market by itself. Western Anatolian agriculture was by no means a monoculture and farmers had the flexibility to respond to fluctuations in world markets. In this respect, the region’s success can perhaps be attributed to the fact that its agriculture was flexible, characterized more by its diversity of crops rather than by production of any single crop.

190

CHAPTER FIVE A MEDITERRANEAN GATEWAY: IZMIR IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The Western Anatolian countryside experienced an extraordinary revival from the 1830s on and became intricately linked to Izmir, the principal export outlet of the Ottoman Empire. In this period, the traditional separation between the city and countryside faded gradually and the interactions between the two entities increased considerably, mostly on account of developments in trade and advancements in transportation and communication technologies. The unprecedented growth of traffic between Izmir and its hinterlands due to improved transport and communication on one hand contributed to the expansion of trade and economy; on the other hand, it placed increasing strain on the city’s existing infrastructure. When the difficulties of managing and monitoring the movement of people and goods increased and the city started to suffer under an ever-increasing cargo traffic, the reorganization of urban commercial space, the need for improvements of loading and unloading facilities and sanitary and public health conditions became the central preoccupations of urban administrators. From the mid-nineteenth century on, Izmir adapted rapidly to the changes in the structure and flow of international trade based on agricultural exports and manufactured imports, restored its infrastructure, sanitary systems, and storage and handling facilities, and integrated them into the developing communication and transport network. The high level of economic activities fueled by agricultural production in the hinterland translated into urban space in the form of physical, as well as social and cultural

 191    

change. These changes entrenched Izmir’s position as the empire’s gateway linking the Western Anatolian hinterlands to world markets.

Urban Commercial Space Before the Nineteenth Century

The emergence of Izmir as a significant port located at the interface between land and maritime networks and serving as a link between the Ottoman Empire and Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had created a distinctive commercial structure that was uncommon to many Ottoman cities.590 Commercial activities in the city were concentrated in two particular areas, the bazaar (çarşı) and the Frank quarter (Frenk mahallesi or mahalle-i efrenc).591 The bazaar was situated next to what had once been the inner harbor, an inlet that opened to the Gulf of Izmir. Large vessels could enter the inner harbor prior to the sixteenth century, but later this access became impossible because of the silt and soil carried down by the rains from Mount Pagus, as well as litter and waste dumped from the ships.592 As a result, the inner harbor gradually became shallower; yet, it did not entirely disappear until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Galleys and other smaller ships continued to use it. Like many other bazaars in Ottoman trade centers, the bazaar of Izmir was a conglomeration of streets and alleys with shops, workplaces, and stalls of every kind.593 It conformed to an                                                                                                                           590

For the city’s early revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Chapter 2, pp. 9-10. Zandi-Sayek, 14. 592 Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, “Der Bazar von Izmir. Studien zur Geschichte und Gestalt des Wirtschaftszentrums einer ägäischen Handelsmetropole” Mitteilungen der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft 27/28 (198081): 423). European travelers visiting the city in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries repeatedly reported about the filling-up of the inner harbor in their accounts. Jean Thévenot, Relation d’un voyage fait au Levant (Paris: Joly, 1664), 170-71; Laurent D’Arvieux, Mémoires de Chevalier d’Arvieux (Paris: Charles-Jean-Baptiste Delespine, 1735), 52; Tavernier, 75; Corneille de Bruyn, Voyage au Levant, c’est-à-dire dans les principaux endroits de l’Asie Mineure, dans les isles de Chio, de Rhodes, de Chypre, etc., de même que dans les plus considérables villes d’Egypte, de Syrie et de la Terre Sainte (Delft, The Netherlands: H. de Kroonevelt, 1700), 21; Tollot, 266; Frederick Hasselquist and Charles Linneæus, Voyages and Travels in the Levant in the Years 1749, 50, 51, 52 (London: Davis and Reymers, 1766), 32; Van Egmond and Heyman, Travels Through Part of Europe, Vol. I, 233-34; and Chandler, 71. 593 The major distinction between the bazaar and the çarşı is that the former was a covered building for wholesale or retail trade occupying major roads and passages in central commercial districts, whereas the latter was an uncovered, outdoor market usually set on streets, squares, or crossroads, where producers, artisans, and traders 591

 192    

empire-wide pattern of spatial and functional specialization of services and wares, as well as separation of residential and trading and manufacturing areas.594 The Caravan Bridge, as its name suggests, was the point of entry to and exit from Izmir in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Figure 4). Caravans of dozens of camels, carrying high-value items such as silk, cotton, wool, mohair yarn, spices, and gems across the empire between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean coast all year round, passed over this bridge to access the bazaar.595 The road leading from the Caravan Bridge down to the bazaar was the main artery of the city and it ran on more or less the same path in the nineteenth century as in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not only merchants from faraway lands, but also peasants and producers from nearby towns also used this road to bring their crops to the bazaar and furnish the city with provisions.596

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            exchanged goods and services. In reality, however, the differences between the bazaars and çarşıs were in many situations not clear. In many cases, open market places were often called çarşı instead of bazaar, and vice versa. For an attempt to define bazaar and çarşı, see Eugen Wirth, “Zum Problem des Bazaars,” Der Islam 52 (1974): 203-60. 594 Zandi-Sayek, 15. 595 D’Arvieux, 44 and Pococke, 38. For caravan trade in Izmir and Western Anatolia, see Chapter 2, particularly pp. 30-32. 596 Zandi-Sayek, 14.

 193    

Figure 4: The Caravan Bridge

The bazaar of Izmir, as the center of a thriving economy, responded to the economic and cultural needs of the city. Crowded by merchants, artisans, shopkeepers, vendors, soldiers, workers, slaves and porters, it was a hub of cultural and commercial exchange.597 European observers regarded it as a place to find all the elements of the East. Their fascination for and attraction to the bazaar filled their accounts, diaries, and letters. “Everything what is precious in the Orient and the Occident is found in the bazaar,” wrote Joseph de la Porte in 1771 and listed the merchandize he saw there: “silken and cotton fabrics, clothes, linens, carpets, furs, beverages from Brazil and Campeche, sugar, cinnamon, indigo, cochineal, perfumes from Arabia, dyes, porcelains from China, all abound.”598 William Knight also delineated bazaar goods in 1838 visit: “saddles, shovel-stirrups, horse-shoes, and silken shirts; sword-blades, gunbarrels, paper lanterns, and attar of roses; inkhorns, Brusa                                                                                                                           597

Knight, 293-301. Joseph de la Porte, Le voyageur françois, ou la connaissance de l’ancien et du nouveau Monde, Vol. 2 (Paris: Cellot, 1771), 26.

598

 194    

dressing-gowns, reed-pens, letter-bags, spelling-books, tobacco, and embroidered kerchiefs; in short, a sample of everything under the sun.”599 The Frank quarter, on the other hand, developed as a response to long-distance trade between the Ottoman Empire and Europe.600 From the seventeenth century on, European merchants settled on a narrow strip between the coast and the famous Frank Street, or Rue de Franque, the main artery of the European district, when they leased fireproof stone buildings. These buildings, popularly known as verhanes or ferhanes – the contracted pronunciation of “frenkhanes” (Franks’ houses) – were narrow passageways between the land and the sea and combined both commercial and residential functions.601 The multiple uses of plots and buildings for both commercial and residential purposes was characteristic of pre-industrial Europe and the verhanes in Izmir conformed to this pattern from the beginning. In these buildings, storage rooms and workshops were located on the ground floor and the rest of the building was for residential use only. Each building had its private jetty and back door, as well as landing stage, opening onto the sea. The verhanes were used mainly for the transfer of low-bulk commodities such as silk, cotton, wool, mohair yarn, and opium, which mostly arrived at hans first and, after the sorting, weighing, and packing processes were completed, were brought there. Verhanes allowed for multiple points of access to the sea and fulfilled the requirements of transit trade. However, verhanes caused bottlenecks in both land and water transportation when the merchants, brokers, and dealers based in the city increased their economic and environmental control over the human and natural resources of a large hinterland. As we will see in the following pages, the changing structure of the economy, the                                                                                                                           599

Knight, 295 and Aubrey de Vere, Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey, Vol. II (London: Richard Bentley, 1850), 97-98. 600 The Frank quarter was mentioned almost by every European visitor in the city in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For some accounts of it, see D’Arvieux, 54; Tavernier, 77; Tollot, 267; and Pococke, 37. 601 Cânâ Bilsel, “A Specific Urban Form Between Sea and City: The ‘Frank Quarter’ of Izmir” in ISUF 1999: Transformations of Urban Form: From Interpretations to Methodologies in Practice, ed. Roberto Corona and Gian Luigi Maffei (Florence: Alinea, 1999), 8-11 and Zandi-Sayek, 13-17. See also Filippos Falbos, “O Frangomahalas tis Smymis kai ta Frangochiotika vivlia,” Mikrasiatika Chronika 8 (1969): 173-225 and MüllerWiener, 439.

 195    

dramatic growth of the volume of international trade, the shifting gravity of the center of commerce, and the construction of the modern quay in the city led to a complete change in the function of the Frank quarter, even though its morphological characteristics remained unchanged until the 1922 fire. In the bazaar of Izmir, production and sales mostly took place under the same roof in workshops and small factories, and this kind of working activity remained broadly the same for a long time. Artisans gathered according to their specialties or wares in bedestens and in the labyrinth of streets surrounding them.602 Bedesten, literally translated “cloth or textile market,” was a covered marketplace, built of stone or brick and well protected from the outside. In a bedesten, one could buy, sell, or trade textiles, shoes, leather goods, jewelry, and other precious items.603 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, three bedestens are known to have existed in the bazaar of Izmir. The Grand Vizier Köprülü Fazıl Ahmet Paşa built the first bedesten in the city in 1677; it was known as the Göl Bedesteni (Lake Bedesten).604 With a length of 200 meters and a width of 15 to 20 meters, it was Izmir’s largest bedesten.605 Fifty years later, a second bedesten, the Çuha Bedesteni (Felt Bedesten), was erected nearby.606 As its name suggests, it was exclusively for the trade of textiles. Some sources also mention the existence of a third bedesten, the Bakır Bedesteni (Copper Bedesten), which was probably smaller and less significant than the Göl and Çuha

                                                                                                                          602

Joseph M. Tancoigne, Voyage à Smyrne, Vol. I, 28 and Alexis de Valon, Une année dans le Levant, Vol. 2 (Paris: Jules Labitte, 1846), 50. 603 For the history and architectural characteristics of bedestens in the Ottoman Empire, see Semavi Eyice, “Les bedestens dans l’architecture Turque,” in Atti del secondo Congresso internazionale di arte turca (Naples: Istituto universitario orientale, Seminario di turcologia, 1965), 113-17; idem, “Bedesten,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 5 (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1992), 302-11; Klaus Kreiser, “BedestenBauten im Osmanischen Reich,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 29 (1979): 367–400; and Mehmet Tuncel, “Osmanlı Mimarisinde Bedestenler,” (Ph.D. Diss., Ankara University, 1980). See also Halil İnalcik, “The Hub of the City: The Bedestan of Istanbul,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 1, no. 1 (1979-80): 1-17. 604 Filippos Falbos, “Bezestenia kai chania sti Smirni,” Mikroasiatika Chronika 6 (1961): 141. Kreiser mistranslates the name as the “Yol Bedesten” (Kreiser, 385-86) 605 Ibid. 606 Ibid., 149-50.

 196    

bedestens.607 Adjacent to or in close proximity to the bedestens there were also numerous shops and workplaces such as barbershops, bakeries, and pharmacies. While these shopkeepers and handicraftsmen were mostly Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, the wandering merchants and peddlers, who moved around all day long, frequented the bedestens, and sold the items they carried on their backs, were predominantly Turks (Muslims). The han was another significant type of commercial building in the bazaar. It was a rectangularly-shaped building with one or two floors and a large courtyard, where merchants could stay with their wares.608 Similar to the grouping of artisans pursuing similar activities or manufacturing and selling certain commodities in bedestens, hans were also places that brought sellers and buyers of a particular item or a group of items together. The grouping of merchants, intermediaries, and dealers in hans more or less by specialty increased with the growth and diversification of trade and production. The names of some of the hans constructed in that period in Izmir give clues about the service provided or the merchandise sold and traded there. For example, the Tütün Han was home to tobacco merchants and dealers and the Yemişçiler Han was the meeting place for fig experts. When the merchandise of the interior arrived in a han for shipment abroad, all people involved in the transaction, foreign and local merchants, intermediaries, brokers, workers, and porters, swarmed to the place for the unloading, inspection, and sorting of the merchandise. Merchants, camel drivers, wayfarers, and itinerants used hans to dine and sleep in. In this respect, hans were not only the

                                                                                                                          607

Ibid., 153. Hans were referred to as caravanserais by some observers. The structure of caravanserais with a large entry gate leading into a spacious courtyard is very similar to hans. However, caravanserais were mostly built on the major highways in the Ottoman Empire. Gündüz Özdeş, Türk Çarşıları (Istanbul: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Mimarlık Fakültesi, 1953); İsmet İlter, Tarihi Türk Hanları (Ankara: Karayolları Genel Müdürlüğü, 1969); Ceyhan Güran, Türk Hanlarının Gelişimi ve İstanbul Hanları Mimarisi (Istanbul: Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü, 1978); Mustafa Cezar, “Türk Tarihinde Kervansaray,” VIII. Türk Tarih Kongresi (11-13 Ekim 1976), Vol II (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1981), 931-40; idem, Typical Commercial Buildings of the Ottoman Classical Period and the Ottoman Construction System (Istanbul: İş Bankası Yayınları, 1983); Eleanor Sims, “Trade and Travel: Markets and Caravanserais,” in Architecture of the Islamic World, ed. George Michell (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), 80-111.

608

 197    

meeting places of sellers and buyers from diverse cultures and backgrounds, but also resting places for out-of-town people and their animals. The hans of Izmir played a significant role in large-scale international trade, and therefore in the growth of Izmir.609 According to Katip Çelebi, there were already sixty hans in Izmir in 1648.610 Evliya Çelebi, the famous Ottoman traveler, counted eighty-two hans in the city in 1671/72.611 He gave the names of eighteen of these hans in his famous Seyahatname (Book of Travels). However, none of these names were shown in nineteenth century city guides and maps, an indication that the seventeenth-century hans in the city were brought down by the destructive earthquakes and fires over time.612 Yet, thanks to the flourishing trade with Europe, more than a hundred new hans that carried on long-distance caravan trade were constructed during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.613 The Kızlarağası Han, which still exists, was the most impressive of the eighteenth century hans in Izmir.614 It was commissioned in 1744/45 by Hacı Beşir Ağa, who was the kızlarağası, or “black eunuch,” in the Ottoman palace.615 The Kızlarağası Han is a solid rectangular building consisting of a large courtyard and two floors; the first floor was reserved for shops, offices, and storage, while the second floor was for lodging. The courtyard was used to stable the camels and horses. Even though most of the seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century hans in Izmir either lost their characteristics or were demolished in                                                                                                                           609

Some survey studies on the han buildings in are: M. Münir Aktepe, “İzmir Hanları ve Çarşıları Hakkında Ön Bilgi,” İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi 25 (1971): 105-54; Bozkurt Ersoy, İzmir Hanları (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1981); idem, “İzmir Hanları ve Üzerine Tespit ve İncelemeler,” Ankara Üniversitesi Dil Tarih Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 32, no. 1-2 (1988): 97-103; Çınar Atay, Kapanan Kapılar: İzmir Hanları (Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Yayınları, 2003); and Müller-Wiener, 436-39 and 448-54. 610 Katip Çelebi, Cihannüma (Istanbul: 1729), 669 qtd. in Aktepe, “İzmir Hanları ve Çarşıları,” 108. 611 Evliya, 96. 612 Müller-Wiener, 427. 613 Raif Nezih, İzmir’in Tarihi, Vol. 1, 9; Falbos, “Bezestenia kai chania sti Smirni,” 136-41; and Müller-Wiener, 448-54. 614 Aktepe 133-35 and Ersoy, İzmir Hanları, 24-30. For the history of the Kızlarağası Han, see Erwin Gräf, Die Geschichte eines Chan’s in Smyrna. Eine wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studie (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 1955). See also work by Jane Hathaway, such as Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem (London: Oneworld Publications, 2005). 615 Aktepe, 133.

 198    

time, the city still had 143 hans at the turn of the twentieth century.616 Unfortunately, the fire that burned the city at the end of the Turco-Greek War in September 1922 swept out most of the hans from these centuries. Only a handful of them, such as the Çakaloğlu Han, the Mirkelamoğlu Han, the Karaosmaoğlu Han, and the Selvili Han, have survived to the present day.617 The hans and bedestens that were constructed from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries can be seen as the result of the Ottoman government’s policy to foster intraregional trade and consolidate the city’s position as the empire’s leading port.

Transformation of Urban Commercial Space

In the second half of the nineteenth century, wide-ranging structural and operational changes, as well as developments in transportation technology, manifested themselves clearly in the reorganization of urban commercial space in Izmir. The mid-nineteenth century was a time when low-bulk and high-value items coming from afar to the city were gradually replaced by agricultural products and raw materials that were extracted from the adjacent river valleys. In this period, the regions behind the city were rapidly drawn into the broader market economy, and Izmir witnessed the arrival in much greater quantities than before of a diversity of agricultural products from these regions, such as cereals, cotton, figs, raisins, dried fruits, tobacco, madder, valonia, opium, and olives. Trade in agricultural goods and raw materials became the lifeblood of the urban economy in Izmir and fostered the creation of a new commercial and industrial district. The storage buildings and warehouses built in this district greatly facilitated the handling and storage of these goods and materials before shipment. The most important development, however, was the construction of a new, modern quay between the years 1867-75. As with the railroads that made the agricultural goods in the interior                                                                                                                           616 617

Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın, (Aydın: Vilayet Matbaası, 1891), 426. Müller-Wiener, 428-29.

 199    

accessible to profitable exploitation, the new quay, as we will see in the following pages, was a major improvement for the loading and unloading of goods. The construction of commercial buildings and public works, as well as the establishment of banking and finance institutions, on one hand, increased the city’s commercial and industrial prospects. On the other hand, rapid urban and commercial growth and prosperity had outpaced the ability of its administrators to address the problems of a burgeoning urban center. “The streets of Smyrna are narrow, dirty, inconvenient, and badly paved,” noted William Hunter in 1793.618 Richard Robert Madden made a similar observation in 1829: “The town of Smyrna, like most other Turkish capitals is a filthy congregation of narrow lanes and pestilential alleys.”619 During the hot and humid summer months the lack of sanitary conditions was especially obvious. “The sewers and drains run through the streets and the court-yards of the best houses…,” wrote Charles MacFarlane in 1828, “…render Smyrna insupportable from May to the end of September.620 Parallel to the expansion of commercial activity, industry, and manufacturing, the degree of density, congestion, and chaos had increased dramatically in the city. Even as late as the 1860s, it was not uncommon, especially during harvest season, to see caravans consisting of dozens of camels passing through the narrow lanes of the city.621 The construction of the Izmir-Aydın and Izmir-Turgutlu railroads relegated camels to secondary status and these animals were used for bringing goods to the main lines; yet the caravan business did not cease completely between the city and country, and camels remained as part of the urban scene.622 Urban overcrowding of camels was only a part of the larger debate over

                                                                                                                          618

Hunter, 175. Madden, 146. 620 MacFarlane, 12. 621 Marmier, 149. 622 Ross, 165 and Hunter, 291. 619

 200    

urban renewal and modernization and was used to highlight the unhealthy and unsanitary conditions in the streets of Izmir in the mid-nineteenth century.623 From the mid-nineteenth century on, significant modifications occurred in the urban commercial center of Izmir. These modifications have usually been attributed to the desire of Tanzimat administrators to modernize and beautify it according to Western norms. The transformations Izmir’s central areas underwent in this period have therefore often been interpreted within the discourse of the Tanzimat and its impact on urban space.624 It is beyond doubt that the Tanzimat introduced a new conception of urban space and encouraged local authorities to initiate urban reforms in areas within their jurisdiction. Furthermore, public health and urban sanitation was a major concern and the authorities took remedying measures to avoid and mitigate the negative social and environmental impact of commercial growth and urban encroachment. However, such reform efforts were not merely an adoption of Western practices of urban modernization and should also be viewed as a response to social, economic, and ecological forces at work. During the years of the Tanzimat, the city lived through consecutive urban conflagrations—in 1834, 1841, and 1845—and these fires compelled the Ottoman authorities to enact urban renewal, planning and housing legislation. Despite the damage they caused, fires in Izmir, as Zandi-Sayek has argued, “offered an important opportunity for renovating old institutions, particularly in prospering non-Muslim neighborhoods.”625 In particular, the 1845 fire marks a turning point in the urban environmental history of Izmir because it                                                                                                                           623

Journal de Smyrne (Feb. 2, 1834); Journal de Smyrne (Oct. 11, 1834); Journal de Smyrne (Mar. 11, 1835); Journal de Smyrne (Mar. 18, 1835); Joseph François Michaud and Jean Joseph François Poujoulat, Correspondance d’Orient (1830-1831), Vol I. (Brussels: J. P. Meline, 1835), 176; and De Vere, 99. 624 Cânâ Bilsel, “Cultures et fonctionnalités: l’évolution de la morphologie urbaine de la ville d’Izmir aux XIXème et début XXème siècles,” (Ph.D. Diss., Université Paris X, 1996); Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis, “Les Européens et leur implantation dans l’espace urbain de Smyrne (1750-1850),” in Les étrangers dans la ville. Minorités et espace urbain du bas Moyen Age à l’époque moderne, ed. Jacques Bottin and Donatella Calabi (Paris: Editions de la MSH, 1999), 65-75; and idem, “Smyrne au XIXème siècle. Organisation et utilisation de l’espace urbain,” in Actes du IIe Colloque International - Association des Etudes Néohelléniques, (Athens: Association des etudes néohelléniques, 2000), 371-87. 625 Zandi-Sayek, 79.

 201    

“provided an important impetus for introducing new measures related to the form and dimensions of streets.” 626 The fire broke out on July 4, 1845, and destroyed two-thirds of the commercial district of Izmir, having a more devastating effect on social and economic life in the city than the previous fires.627 The years following this disastrous event witnessed remarkable changes in the physical, social, and economic makeup of the city. It was in the aftermath of the 1845 fire that the provincial council of Izmir envisaged the urban master plan that, inter alia, provided the framework for urban renewal. The first master plan for Izmir was prepared in 1854-1856 by the Italian engineer and urban planner Luigi Storari.628 According to the Storari plan, the burned areas became the testing ground of a Western-style urban planning before they were implemented in other districts in the city. For instance, the plan recognized the disadvantages of the organic urban fabric with its winding streets, narrow lanes, and cul de sacs and prescribed the opening of wide, straight boulevards and streets that conformed to European norms. The plan, which put the proposed differentiation of commercial and residential districts into practice, acknowledged the local administrator’s desire to improve the quality of life of its residents, to increase control over urban space, and to facilitate the traffic between the interior and the sea. With the implementation of the Storari plan, the traditional street pattern was replaced by a regular grid pattern and the burnt areas were entirely built up accordingly.629 The intensive development of certain lots to fulfill the needs of exportoriented trade accelerated when a new, modern commercial district came into existence that                                                                                                                           626

Ibid., The Morning Chronicle, “Conflagration at Smyrna – Immense Loss of Property,” (July 23, 1845) and The Times (London), “Affairs of Turkey,” (July 29, 1845). 628 There is not much information about the life and works of Luigi Storari. For existing studies on him, see Stefanos Yerasimos, “Quelques éléments sur l’ingénieur Luigi Storari,” in Architettura e architetti italiani ad Istanbul tra il XIX e il XX secolo (Istanbul: Istituto italiano di cultura, 1995), 117-23; Zeki Arıkan, “Storari’nin Kemeraltı Planı,” İzmir Kent Kültürü Dergisi 4 (2001): 76-80; and Cenk Berkant, “Italian Architects in Smyrna,” in The Presence of Italian Architects in Mediterranean Countries, ed. Pietro Gagliomo (Florence: Maschietto Editore, 2008), 329-31. 629 Cânâ Bilsel, “The Ottoman Port City of Izmir in the 19th Century: Cultures, Modes of Space Production and the Transformation of Urban Space,” in 7 Centuries of Ottoman Architecture “A Supra-National Heritage,” ed. Afife Batur (Istanbul: Yapı Endüstri Merkezi, 1999), 230. 627

 202    

integrated certain sections of the Armenian, Greek, and Frank quarters into the commercial landscape. The redesigned Tilkilik Avenue and the newly opened Haliliye and Reşadiye Avenues served as thoroughfares for trade and connected the bazaar and the Caravan Bridge with the new commercial district.630 In this period of economic revival, the layout and function of hans and other commercial and hostelry buildings altered to accommodate changes in the nature and volume of trade. Fireproof, high-roofed buildings took over the functions of the traditional hans to handle the increased traffic of heavy and bulky agricultural goods, such as cereals, figs, raisins, dried fruits, and olives, which did not demand rapid delivery to foreign countries. Even though they were also referred to as hans, these structures resembled warehouses or entrepôts more than archetypal han buildings. For example, contrary to traditional hans of the previous centuries, they neither had chambers for guests, nor a courtyard for camels and horses. The vast inner space was usually divided into storerooms to maximize the utilization of space. (Figure 5)631 Because the transportation of bulky agricultural products was much cheaper by water than by road, such entrepôts and warehouses were situated near the new quay. It is also important to note that the spatial orientation of economic activity and the creation of a new commercial district in the city did not diminish the role of the old bazaar. The development of an export-oriented economy did not replace, but coexisted with and complemented, traditional manufacturing activity. Lastly, Izmir became a thriving center of business and finance in this period of commercial prosperity. Banks, credit agencies, bankers, and private traders used the city as a base for their commercial operations. They supplied foreign and local merchants with the necessary capital for further investment both in the city and countryside. It was also common                                                                                                                           630

Ibid. and Zandi-Sayek, 79. For the transformation of the use of space in the hans of Izmir from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, see Mübeccel Kıray, Örgütleşemeyen Kent: İzmir, 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Bağlam, 1988), 40.

631

 203    

practice to borrow money from moneylenders, at least for peasants, artisans, and small-scale producers, who usually had difficulty in obtaining loans and credits from banks and similar institutions. In 1885, there were more than fifty private moneylenders in the city, who had a loan capital of between 40 and 150,000 Francs.632 The reordering of the commercial district and the construction of storage buildings for valuable cargoes also encouraged the introduction of an efficient insurance system to reduce the risks inherent to maritime trade, such as fire and sinking. According to Scherzer, there were eighteen insurance companies in the city in 1873.633 This number exceeded forty by the 1880s.634

Figure 5: Entrepôts and warehouses near the new quay (c.a 1890)

                                                                                                                          632

Georgiadès, 181. Scherzer, 112-13. 634 Georgiadès, 182. 633

 204    

Punta: The Birth of a New Industrial District

The shift in the commercial axis of Izmir toward the north took place partially on plots of land that had previously been residential areas for Greeks, Armenians, and Jews and required them to relocate from their traditional neighborhoods. Furthermore, migrants and refugees, who had been incorporated within the limits of the existing city by the first decades of the nineteenth century, started building new settlements on the fringes of the city, where once marshes, orchards, and vineyards existed. For example, twenty new quarters came into being around the Fasula district to settle Greek, Maltese, and Ionian immigrants, while additional working class neighborhoods, such as Tepecik, Murtakya, and Çikutya, emerged around the cemeteries nearby the Caravan Bridge.635 As a result of the massive population movements into and within the city, the once clear-cut ethno-religious boundaries became blurred. The urban space in Izmir was no longer uniquely marked by visible ethnic, confessional, or national differences, but was restructured along commercial lines in the second half of the nineteenth century.636 In 1879, the municipal reorganization, which divided the city into two municipal districts known as the upper town and the lower town, confirmed this reconfiguration. The upper town, which was south of the road from the Caravan Bridge to the shore, encompassed Muslim and Jewish neighborhoods, as well as the old bazaar, the administrative-military quarters, and customs clearing and warehouse facilities. The lower town, on the other hand, was north of the artery that ran between the Caravan Bridge and the waterfront and included the Greek, Armenian, and European neighborhoods, the consulates,

                                                                                                                          635

Zandi-Sayek, 25. Bilsel, “The Ottoman Port City of Izmir,” 228-30; Smyrnelis, “Les Européens et leur implantation,” 67-68; and idem, “Smyrne au XIXème siècle,” 377-78. There were always clearly defined boundaries among the Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and Frank (European) neighborhoods; however a ghetto-like segregation of ethnic and religious communities did not exist in anytime in the history of Ottoman Izmir.

636

 205    

and a range of business and leisure facilities such as maritime companies, insurance and brokerage firms, post offices, hotels, casinos, European-style cafés, theaters, and clubs.637 The spectacular growth of agricultural production and trade accompanied the planned development of an industrial district on the northern edge of the lower town, known as The Point (Punta). The vacant lands between the Point district and the Meles River, which had been estuarine marsh, began to be reclaimed already in the 1830s as the city’s encroachment toward the north became clear. Urban authorities conceded these lands, located at a suitable site where water could be harnessed from the sea and river, to European or Ottoman-Christian entrepreneurs, who built some of the city’s first factories and industrial plants, producing many necessities for the city and countryside.638 The Armenian merchant Düzoğlu Hoca Agop opened the city’s first paper mill here in 1847.639 Situated “on a piece of land covering an area of fifty thousand square yards,” the paper mill converted the area, which was “in a state of extreme indigence,” into an industrial base.640 Three years later, Dimo Issigonis, a rich Ottoman-Greek merchant, established an iron foundry near Hoca Agop’s paper mill.641 At the beginning, Issigonis’s factory was a simple establishment; however, its production capacity increased in tandem with the commercialization and mechanization of agriculture in the Western Anatolian countryside. For example, in 1872, in one year alone, this factory produced eleven steam-powered machines, twelve steam boilers, twenty to thirty hydraulic olive presses, a hundred steam pumps, forty water pumps, five fire pumps, sixty to seventy water and oil tanks, ten copper and iron boilers for soap factories, and a variety of iron casting

                                                                                                                          637

Zandi-Sayek, 98. Smyrnelis, “Smyrne au XIXème siècle,” 376; Bilsel, “The Ottoman Port City of Izmir,” 231; and ZandiSayek, 25. Some industrial establishments had been created in the outskirts of the city before railroad construction began. For example, paint and print factories were clustered in the Basmahane district on the banks of the Meles River and its tributary Boyacı Creek already in the late eighteenth century. For more information on these factories, see Müller-Wiener, 434 and Abdullah Martal, Değişim Sürecinde İzmir’de Sanayileşme (Izmir: Dokuz Eylül Yayınları, 1999), 123. 639 Martal, 134-35. 640 “The Paper-Mill at Smyrna,” Eliza Cook’s Journal 268 (June 17, 1854): 122-23. 641 Ibid., 138-39. 638

 206    

for coaches and agricultural machinery.642 Foreign companies that purchased large quantities of agricultural goods from diverse sources and were involved in each stage of processing and distribution of these goods, such as the Smyrna Vineyards and Brandy Distillers Co. Ltd., Smyrna Dried Fruit Importers Association Ltd., Asia Minor Tobacco Co. Ltd., Smyrna Fig Packers Ltd., Ottoman Oil Co. Ltd., and Levant Trading Agency Ltd., also became established in this district in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. These companies took storerooms, depots, and warehouses on lease and used these places as a combined processing and packaging plant for their export businesses.643 However, industrial food production and distribution that developed hand in hand with the agricultural growth was not only for export purposes. Traditional food manufacturers and retailers such as bakers, pastrymakers, and confectioners also benefited from the cheaper supply of foodstuffs and additives. For example, the first steam-flour mill set up by the McAndrew & Forbes Company near the shore in the Punta district in 1850 was welcomed because it reduced the manufacturers’ dependence on imported flour.644 Other entrepreneurs followed the lead of the McAndrew & Forbes, Company and the number of steam-powered flour mills across the city reached eleven by the 1890s. These mills produced 180,000 to 190,000 liters of flour each day.645 As these examples demonstrate, in the nineteenth-century Izmir, the fortunes of the merchant, wholesaler, and dealer were tightly linked with the fortunes of farmers and producers. The environmental and agricultural transformations that took place in the hinterland had a decisive impact on the industrial production in the city. The parceling of land on the northern edge of the city constituted “the first example of ‘planned’ urban development with speculative purposes in Izmir.”646 Industrial activities had                                                                                                                           642

Scherzer, 189-90. Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 138 644 Martal, 141-42. See also: Arıkan and Martal. 645 Rougon, 262. According to Orhan Kurmuş, none of the steam-powered flour mills was as big as the first steam flour mill established in 1850 (Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 266). 646 Bilsel, “The Ottoman Port City of Izmir,” 232. 643

 207    

to disperse into other areas when the speculation over land in the Point area gained momentum and land prices rose rapidly with the spread of the news about the Izmir-Aydın railroad. By the 1870s, several new iron foundries had been established in different parts of the city. The Papps, Smith, Biejjering, Westefeld, Caramaniola, Racking & Dimo, and Gasparis were the most important iron foundries in Izmir.647 In 1875, Osmik Bey, an Armenian merchant, opened a cotton mill in the vicinity of the Baths of Diana in Halkapınar. It was the first cotton mill, not only in Izmir but also in Anatolia, and it received tax exemptions and special privileges from the government.648 The silk industry, which had decayed after other goods and products came into prominence, was encouraged and revived in the 1880s. The British merchant Griffith established a silk filature in Bornova.649 The development of industrial technology and the rise of factories in Izmir from the mid-nineteenth century on became a source of friction between different groups in the city. Even though western technology offered an opportunity to some merchants and entrepreneurs to run profit-seeking ventures, it was not always welcomed or well received by some local industries. Certain groups of people, such as textile manufacturers, shoemakers, wood turners, and basket and sack-makers, raised objections to Western technologies for fear of losing employment. For example, the factory for making boxes to pack dried fruits established by a British merchant in 1841 was closed down as a result of resistance shown by the guilds in the city. Similarly, local manufacturers deprecated the textile factory that the Abbott Family attempted to set up in 1861.650 However, their fear was dissipated when the industrialization fuelled by agricultural production had only a limited negative impact on artisanal production and even contributed to the growth of traditional handicrafts in the city. Like the diversity of                                                                                                                           647

Scherzer, 190 and Rougon, 262. “Smyrna’s Baumwoll-Export und die erste Baumwoll-Spinnerei in Anatolien,” Österreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient (1878): 58-59. 649 “Wiederaufkleben der Seidenindustrie in der Provinz Smyrna, ” Österreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient (1885): 197. 650 İlhan Tekeli and Selim İlkin, “The Public Works Program and the Development of Technology in the Ottoman Empire in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Turcica 28 (1996): 212. 648

 208    

agricultural products and raw materials flowing continuously from the hinterland, the range of industrial production was quite wide and its development was important both in itself and in generating additional jobs for local manufacturers in small shops. Moreover, the sharply rising demand for textiles, food, and other agricultural and raw materials by the city’s rapidly growing populations provided new job and investment opportunities for small businesses through their local networks and contacts. Therefore, even though the development of industrial technology in conjunction with prospering commercial agriculture did not pose a serious threat to local craftsmen, they still had to adapt to the changing conditions of a hinterland-directed market economy and to orient their manufacturing activity both towards the domestic market and towards export substitution. The Ottoman government’s initiatives to protect local manufacturing activities also played a central role in the survival of small businesses. In short, contrary to common conjectures about the devastating impact of European technology on traditional crafts in the Ottoman Empire, local manufacturing activity in Izmir developed parallel to modern industrial production.

Becoming the Storehouse of Anatolia: The Quay Project

In the mid-nineteenth century, when overseas trade started to take on increasing importance, it brought problems as well as benefits. The growth in steamship tonnage and the amount of cargo handled, on one hand, contributed to economic dynamism and vitality in Izmir; on the other hand, it constrained the city’s ability to export agricultural products coming from the hinterland to foreign markets faster and cheaper. In these years, “delays, increased costs, and frustrated merchants” were common to Ottoman ports that had “changed relatively little over the century.”651 As late as the 1860s, Izmir had no proper harbor for large                                                                                                                           651

Quataert, “Age of Reforms,” 802.

 209    

steamers and vessels, which were obliged to anchor at a distance from the shore. The cargoes were transferred into lighters and then brought to the shore to be off-loaded onto land. As the number of ships in the trade with Izmir increased, it became difficult to find deepwater anchorage close inshore, maneuver through harbor traffic, and arrange a lighter. Small and unstable lighters often capsized, drowning people and losing the loads. Especially after the opening of the Izmir-Aydın railroad, lighters could not keep up with the increasing cargo arriving from the interior.652 In short, moving cargo by lighters was not only unsafe, but also cost time and money for all involved in the transaction. For a city whose economic prospects rested entirely on international maritime trade, the construction of a new quay with modern loading and unloading facilities was inevitable.653 Without a proper harbor, a port-city could never attain to the position of the gateway city, linking the natural resources of Western Anatolia with European industrial and commercial networks. The plans to improve the waterfront and construct a new quay had been on the table since the 1850s, but they remained on hold until the arrival of steam trains filled up with the produce of the interior. Why Izmir did not have a modern quay even as late as the 1860s was a legal as much as a financial and technical question. In contrast to lands reclaimed for agricultural purposes, whose legal status was set by codes and regulations, the use of the seashore remained a matter of controversy until the second half of the nineteenth century. The waters of the Gulf of Izmir were once the property of the vakıf of Bezm-i Alem Valide Sultan, the wife of Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808-39) and the mother of Abdülmecid (r. 1839-61). After                                                                                                                           652

Rougon, 446 and Kurmuş, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 231. Vilma Hastaoglou-Martinidis, “The Cartography of Harbor Construction in Eastern Mediterranean Cities: Technical and Urban Modernization in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day, ed. Biray Kolluoğlu and Meltem Toksöz (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 82. For the construction of a new quay in Izmir, see Mübahat Kütükoğlu, “İzmir Rıhtımı İnşaatı ve İşletme İmtiyazı,” İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi 32, no. 3 (March 1979): 495-558; Vilma HastaoglouMartinidis, “Les villes-ports du bassin oriental de la Méditerranée à la fin du XIXe siècle: travaux portuaires et transformations urbaines,” in Études autour de l’oeuvre d’Etienne Dalmasso, ed. Athanase Arvantinos and Pasquale Coppola (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1998), 507-25; and Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “The Making of an Ottoman Port. The Quay of Izmir in the Nineteenth Century,” The Journal of Transport History 22, no. 1 (March 2001): 23-46.

653

 210    

1826, however, the government parceled out and leased, and after 1847 sold, the waters adjoining the shore to the holders of shorefront properties.654 The new owners of the waterfront filled in their water lots at their own will, extending wharves and piers into the gulf and gaining extra land. This created an indented, uneven, and uncontrolled shoreline.655 Even though the city had a shoreline of more than two and a half miles, public access to the shore was limited except at a few designated points.656 In order to create a space for the new waterfront and provide public access to the water, therefore, the seashore had to be reclaimed and a continuous shoreline had to be formed. To some, therefore, the project was “rather a land reclamation project than a true city embankment.”657 In 1864, John Charnaud, Alfred Barke3r, and George Guarracino, three British merchants from Izmir and Istanbul applied to the Ottoman government for a concession to construct a modern quay 2.2 miles long. The proposed project included a large-scale breakwater, a new customs house with spacious warehouses, wharves, landing piers, and other buildings necessary for maritime operations.658 However, the plan met with resistance from property owners, who insisted that “any attempt to open a continuous public easement along the shore” would violate their property rights and undermine their direct access to the water.659 According to a preliminary project, a straight boulevard would be constructed along the waterfront, which those who had houses, shops, storages, and boat sheds on the shore saw as a threat to their individual rights and livelihood. Whereas the opponents claimed that the sole purpose of the project was to serve the interests of the three British merchants, the proponents favored it because they believed that the project would contribute to the

                                                                                                                          654

Kütükoğlu, “İzmir Rıhtımı İnşaatı,” 502. Zandi-Sayek, 120-21, and Gencer, 576. 656 Zandi-Sayek, 126. 657 “The Smyrna Quay Company,” The Engineer (Feb. 12, 1869), 122. 658 Ibid., 115-16. 659 Ibid., 126. 655

 211    

beautification and transformation of the city and create employment for the working class.660 Long debates and negotiations took place between the government, the three entrepreneurs, and the property owners, causing a delay of more than two years. Finally, the parties agreed upon a revised version of the British proposal, in which the initial waterfront boulevard was broken at four points to reduce the land reclaimed from the sea, while preserving the sense of a continuous boulevard.661 According to the revised project, there was no seafront fit for smuggling, for the customs and tax offices could exercise much stricter control over the shore by means of guards to be placed at the break points.662 On November 27, 1867, the Ministry of Public Works approved the revised project and granted Charnaud, Barker, and Guarracino the concession to build a new quay.663 The three British entrepreneurs, while making preparations for the launch of the Société des Quais de Smyrne (Smyrna Quay Company), signed a contract with Joseph et Élie Dussaud Frères, a French contracting company belonging to the brothers Joseph and Élie Dussaud, French civil engineers. The Dussaud brothers had specialized in quay construction projects across the Mediterranean and had completed the construction of quays in Marseilles, Cherbourg, Trieste, Algiers, and Port-Said.664 The total estimated cost of the project was 6 million Francs. The Smyrna Quay Company agreed with the Dussaud Brothers for a down payment of 600,000 Francs and the payment of the rest in installments. The entrepreneurs had a founding capital of 2.5 million Francs and expected to finance the project by the sale of shares of capital stock.665 Nevertheless, the company was faced with serious judicial and

                                                                                                                          660

Ibid., 132-33. Ibid., 134. 662 Ibid. 663 Georgiadès, 155, Charles Morawitz, Les finances de la Turquie (Paris: Guillaumin et cie, 1902), 193 and Jacques Thobie, Intérêts et impérialisme français dans l’Empire ottoman (1895-1914) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1977), 132. The concession, consisting of twelve articles, was granted for a period of thirty years (Kütükoğlu, “İzmir Rıhtımı İnşaatı,” 503). 664 Georgiadès, 156 and Thobie, 133. 665 Thobie, 133. 661

 212    

financial difficulties and the entrepreneurs could not sell off the shares as they had planned.666 Construction work that had begun a short while before halted in February 1868. When legal and financial complications mounted, the Smyrna Quay Company voided the contract on October 29, 1868, and asked the Dussaud Brothers if they would take over the concession.667 After months of negotiations, the two sides agreed on legal and financial terms relating to the transfer of the concession in April 1869. The official handing over of the project took place on May 6, 1869, when a new contract was signed between the Ottoman government and Joseph and Élie Dussaud.668 After a delay of nearly two years, the Dussaud Brothers resumed the construction work and promised to complete it within two years.669 According to initial estimates, 20,375 cubic meters of rock fill were to be used in the construction along the front of the old quay, piled to a depth of 8.50 meters and a width of 11.40 meters. Nevertheless, it appeared soon after the dumping of the first shiploads of rock fill that the actual depth of the water was 11.40 meters and the width of the enrockment on the seabed was 25.60 meters. This difference between the planned and the actual estimates quintupled the amount of rock fill required; 102,375 cubic meters of rock fill had to be placed in front of the old quay. Similar discrepancies between the planned and actual estimates occurred in the breakwater and across the Bella-Vista Café at the northern end of the harbor. Even though the amount of rock fill had reached 60,932 cubic meters by August 1871, the contractors were only halfway through the project.670 Furthermore, conflicts and disagreements between the Smyrna Quay Company and the landowners regarding the filling in of the land had not been completely resolved.                                                                                                                           666

Cumberbatch’s report on the commerce of Izmir on Dec 31, 1869 in “Commercial reports received at the Foreign Office from Her Majesty’s consuls, in 1869,” AP, Vol. 64 (London, 1870), 84 and Thobie, 133. 667 Thobie, 133. 668 Georgiadès, 159-60; Morawitz, 193; and Thobie, 134. 669 Cumberbatch’s report on the commerce of Izmir on Dec 31, 1869 in “Commercial reports received at the Foreign Office from Her Majesty’s consuls, in 1869-70.” AP, Vol. 65 (London, 1871), 358-59. Zandi-Sayek has claimed that the Dussaud Brothers were given time to complete the project by 1875. (Zandi-Sayek, 141) 670 Kütükoglu, “İzmir Rıhtımı İnşaatı,” 512-13.

 213    

Owners of cafes, shops, and other small businesses resisted expropriation of their property until the last moment.671 The construction was carried on “in utter disregard of their rights and of their claims for equitable compensation,” said George Dennis, the British Consul in Izmir, “that they have not only forcibly been deprived of the free access to the customs which they had enjoyed from time immemorial, but compelled to pay exorbitant dues at the pleasure of the Quay Company.”672 The government extended the concession in 1872 and then in 1874, when the Dussaud Brothers realized that the deadline they had set for the construction of the new quay was not going to be met. When completed in August 1875, the new quay of Izmir included two-well protected docks for commercial operations, a nearly 800-foot-long jetty, a customhouse, quarantine offices, lighthouses, passport and telegraph offices, and warehouses. Larger ships used the larger dock, with a surface of 49 acres, whereas the smaller one of 29 acres was for the coasters. The embankment, stretching 2.2 miles along the shore between Sarıkışla, where the military barracks were located, and Tuzla Burnu near the head of the Izmir-Aydın railroad line, was constructed exclusively on land reclaimed from the sea.673 The shorter part of it was 0.8 miles long and was located in front of the bazaar and the old business district of the city. The Dussaud Brothers, who planned, financed, and implemented the new quay project, received the fruits of their labor in the form of profit. They were granted extensive control over the operation of port facilities and collection of dues and taxes. This privilege sparked conflict between the Dussaud Brothers and foreign merchants in Izmir. In particular, the British merchants in the city vigorously objected to the Dussauds because of their preferential                                                                                                                           671

Zandi-Sayek, 141. Consul George Dennis’s report on the trade and commerce of Izmir for the years 1877 to 1881 in “Commercial reports from Her Majesty’s consuls on the manufactures, commerce, etc. of their consular districts. Part VII.” AP, Vol. 73 (London, 1883), 1072. 673 Rougon, 447; Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie: géographie administrative, statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l’Asie mineure, Vol. 3 (Paris: Leroux, 1894), 447; “Les Ports Maritimes de la Turquie: Ports existants et ports projetés,” Le Génie Civil 55/19 (1909): 349; Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 169; Vilma Hastaoglou-Martinidis, “Les villes-ports du bassin oriental,” 512; and idem, “The Cartography of Harbor Construction,” 89. 672

 214    

treatment of French and Austrian ships, which paid half the rates paid by other flags. The new quay, therefore, was not welcomed by most of the foreign merchants in the city, even though loading and unloading operations could be carried out four or five times more quickly than ever before. The costs were reduced and the discrimination was ended only after the intervention of the Ottoman government in 1882.674 The new quay was supplementary to, and in fact interdependent with, the construction of railroads, and in this respect, it was an important spatial expression of developing citycountry relations. It became a great catalyzer of maritime trade between Western Anatolia and Europe and the key to Izmir’s accelerated growth in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since the 1840s, Izmir had been a way station for eastbound steamers from Europe to the Ottoman Empire. From the 1860s on, direct connections were established between Izmir and Britain, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Greece, Russia, and Egypt, and the city became a terminus for many steamships.675 By 1899, twenty-eight regular lines served Izmir, and the total tonnage increased to 2,180,000 tons.676 The depth of water was six to eight meters in front of the new quay and twelve meters around the jetty, an appropriate condition for steamships and larger vessels to berth on the dock and load and unload their cargo without the intervention of lighters.677 Therefore, even though there was no significant change in the number of ships calling at the port of Izmir before and after the completion of new quay, due to the remarkable rise in the number of steamships, the total tonnage increased threefold in less than four decades.678 The ability of steamships to carry larger cargoes also drove freight rates down. For example, the average freight of dried fruits per ton in British vessels dropped from £4 in 1836 to £1 in 1876 and of valonia from £3 to £1.679 Western shipping lines,                                                                                                                           674

Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 167 and Zandi-Sayek, 118. Ibid.; Rougon, 454-61; and Scherzer, 99. 676 Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 170. 677 Cuinet, 448. 678 Georgiadès, 183. 679 Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 170-71. 675

 215    

furthermore, inaugurated regular direct service from Izmir to other coastal towns on the Aegean such as Ayvalık, Kuşadası, and Makri (Fethiye). Even though these towns also acquired direct links with European markets, Izmir was the gateway city, or the main point of connection of Western Anatolia with the outside world. This impressive urban environment created between maritime and terrestrial spaces was a success, both at a technological and at an urban planning level. The modern quay promoted Izmir as a critical node in the whole maritime and land transport network of the Eastern Mediterranean. In just the same way that railroads overwhelmed camels and horses on the land, the opening of the new quay and changing maritime transport technologies allowed steamships to supplement and then replace sailing vessels. By the end of the century, sailing ships had retired from the deep-water trade and the city was connected to the outside world by steamships. Rapid and unhindered transportation of goods and commodities from and to the city, as well as the development of business, banking, and credit facilities, in short, made it possible to collect, store, and sell a large quantity of agricultural products and raw materials, reinforcing the city’s role as the gateway of Western Anatolia (Figure 6 and Figure 7).

 216    

Figure 6: Port of Izmir before the construction of new quay (c.a 1865)

Figure 7: Port of Izmir after the construction of new quay (c.a 1880)

 217    

The new quay, besides its commercial significance, also engendered urban physical and social transformations in the city. “Faced with solid masonry, and well paved with blocks of lava and red trachyte,” as George Dennis, the British consul in Izmir, noted, the new quay of Izmir was “an embellishment to the town.”680 In 1875, when the project was completed, the area between the imperial barracks and the northeast end of the inner harbor developed into a vibrant commercial center with the administration of the port, public health offices, maritime offices and banks, insurance companies, trade agencies, storage places, and warehouses. The construction of a modern quay, furthermore, enabled the public to have free access to the shore. Casinos, hotels, cafes, clubs, consular offices, shops, and other leisure facilities were compressed together in this narrow strip.681 In this respect, the new waterfront was the city’s showcase and the playground of the upper classes in the late nineteenth century.

Conclusion

For a long time, long-distance trade conducted by camel caravans had shaped social and economic life, as well as the urban landscape in Izmir. Beginning from the midnineteenth century, the city’s ability to draw on agricultural and natural resources from its natural hinterlands brought about significant changes to the growth and development of urban and commercial life. The overall economic change and the decisive transformation of the relations between city and country were reflected in the physical structure of Izmir. The reconfiguration of the central business district, the construction of a new quay, and the reinforcing of commercial and financial buildings took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. New commercial structures and spaces brought by trade-based prosperity                                                                                                                           680

Consul George Dennis’s report on the trade and commerce of Izmir for the years 1877 to 1881 in “Commercial reports from Her Majesty’s consuls on the manufactures, commerce, etc. of their consular districts. Part VII.” AP, Vol. 73 (London, 1883), 1072. 681 Hastaoglou-Martinidis, “The Cartography of Harbor Construction,” 90 and Frangakis-Syrett, “The Making of an Ottoman Port,” 25.

 218    

strengthened Izmir’s economic, as well as political and cultural connections to the country and the outside world. The prospering agriculture and trade in Western Anatolia provided a great stimulus for urban development and brought new structures and new spaces to the city. In addition to the traditional bazaar, a pioneer business district emerged near the shore, where shipping agencies, banks, maritime and insurance companies, finance institutions, post offices, warehouses, and shops emerged. The increased volume and changing nature of trade and transportation, furthermore, altered the architecture of commercial buildings. While traditional hans continued to survive, new and larger han buildings resembling warehouses were erected to respond the growing trade of agricultural products and raw materials. The shift in the center of gravity of commerce went in tandem with the construction of a new quay, which became the major engine of social, economic, and environmental change in Izmir. Before the construction of the new quay, as we have seen, the shoreline was characterized by a densely clustered group of houses, shops, and warehouses. This type of shoreline had apparently developed as a result of long distance trade in low-tonnage but highvalue commodities and indicated a borderline between maritime and terrestrial spaces and between Western Anatolia and the outside world. Similar to the stimulus provided by the railroads in the interior for land reclamation and use, the new quay completely changed the topography of the shoreline, increased the value of waterfront property, and stimulated trade, turning it from a borderline to a borderland, a porous and interactive space of commercial and cultural exchange. The construction of the modern quay, furthermore, eliminated restrictions on the movement of people and goods and, just as the word “gateway” implies “an opening through some obstruction,”682 enhanced the city’s role as a “gateway city.”

                                                                                                                          682

Burghardt, 269.

 219    

CONCLUSION

In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire witnessed the creation of an integrated economy, an economy that bound major port-cities into regional, national, and global markets. Izmir was the principal port-city that linked Western Anatolian farmers and producers to global markets centered in London, Paris, or Amsterdam. Starting from the 1840s, significant changes took place in Izmir and its surrounding area and within a half century much of the urban and rural landscape people inhabit today was created: a large portcity with modern facilities that house millions of people, the remarkably fertile farmlands and vibrant villages that feed these millions, and the major overland and maritime transportation linkages that function of arteries and trade and connect the city with the centers of production and consumption. In the fifty years stretching from the 1840s to the 1890s, Izmir played the major role in shaping the landscape of Western Anatolia, while it was significantly influenced by the social, economic, and environmental changes that took place in its immediate hinterland. In the last three decades, world-systems theory has been one of the most common frameworks used by historian and sociologists to analyze transformations in port-cities across the world resulting from the expansion of capitalism and colonialism. Immanuel Wallerstein and other advocates of the world-systems theory have discussed the key role port-cities played in the establishment of diverse and intimate linkages between the producing (periphery) and consuming (core) regions in the world. The catalyzing role Izmir played in the incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the capitalist market economy and the development of the relationships between the two spheres have also been analyzed in this context in detail. The world-systems theory, while offering a fresh perspective for explaining the emergence of

 220    

Izmir as a major port-city on the Mediterranean coast of the Ottoman Empire on the basis of core-periphery relations, has its shortcomings and deficiencies. Most importantly, it has overemphasized the role of external dynamics, such as the dominant political and economic role of the core, while ignoring and downplaying internal dynamics in the so-called periphery. This dissertation, without minimizing the importance of world-systems theory and other theories and models, has been the first attempt to discuss complex relation among human, animals, plants, the natural landscape, and culture within the periphery from a different perspective, an environmental one. Environmental history, as an important new tool for revealing the apparent economic and ecological dialectic between city and country, helps us see how everything is connected between the two spaces. It allows us to think “outside the box” and to challenge existing histories that have tended to compartmentalize the region’s history into simple dichotomies such as core-periphery, city-country, and urban-rural. I have adopted environmental historical approach, therefore, to explore city-country and urban-rural relations and to understand the role of Western Anatolia as a producing region and transportation corridor to the creation of a vibrant port-city. For understanding the development trajectory of Izmir, whose growth and prosperity depended on its interactions with its immediate hinterland as much as its with distant cities, I have examined the city and its hinterland with their surrounding hills and valleys, railroads, trails, and bridges, cotton fields, fig gardens, vineyards, flour mills, oil presses, warehouses, and quays, but also with their merchants, dealers, wholesalers, seasonal workers, immigrants, refugees, farmers, producers, and nomads. In short, to provide a picture of how Izmir became something completely different at the end of the nineteenth century than what it was at the beginning, I have brought into view a vast array of integral actors and agents that played a key role in the growth of a wide network of interactions yet have been neglected so far.

 221    

In this dissertation, I have offered a new interpretation of Izmir and its hinterland in the late Ottoman Empire and contributed to the literature on three primary fronts. First, I have taken Izmir and Western Anatolia as a model to understand how city and country shared a common past and fundamentally reshaped each other in the late Ottoman Empire. I have demonstrated that, instead of separate accounts, histories of city and countryside can be told as a unified narrative through the lens of environmental history. I have presented a history of Izmir, not as a history of the city itself alone, but as a history of the relations between Izmir and Western Anatolia. In this respect, I have interrogated the growing interconnectedness between city and country and argued that one cannot understand the rise of Izmir without understanding its relationships to its hinterland. As my research has shown, economic and ecological transformations in the rural had complex social, economic, and environmental reverberations in the urban in the nineteenth century Western Anatolia. The traditional dichotomy between city and country that existed at the beginning of the nineteenth century all but disappeared by the end of the century and a unified economic and ecological space and a diverse and dynamic economy oriented toward international markets emerged in the whole region. The growth of Izmir in the late nineteenth century, to put it differently, was not immune from the changes and developments in demography, economy, and transportation technology in the Western Anatolian countryside. The city and the countryside mutually constituted the other and depended on each other economically, socially, and ecologically in the late-Ottoman era.   Second, I have proposed the “gateway city” model as a viable alternative, not only to understand the creation of an integrated economic and ecological space in Western Anatolia, but also to re-interpret Ottoman port-cities’ interactions with their natural and economic hinterlands and the world outside. In the late nineteenth century, Izmir played a much greater role in the East-West interactions, surpassed its rivals, and attained preeminence as a  222    

“gateway city,” which conveyed the natural wealth of Western Anatolian river valleys to European markets. Izmir, as a major avenue between the Ottoman Empire and the global markets, connected distinct economic and ecological zones and regions. It served as the main connection between agricultural producers in Western Anatolia and their markets in Europe. The city’s advantageous location, at the tip of Western Anatolian peninsula and at the intersection of trade routes, and its human and natural resources furnished the basis of its development into the first gateway city of the Ottoman Empire in the late-nineteenth century. Through a discussion of the gateway city model, furthermore, this dissertation has presented a model that has not been applied so far but offers useful insight on Ottoman port-cities’ relations with their hinterlands in the nineteenth century. In other words, since other Ottoman port-cities had common commercial roles, therefore, this study opens a window for looking into social, economic, and environmental change processes taking place in the late Ottoman Empire. Third, and as a much larger contribution to the literature, I have brought environmental history to the attention of a wider range of historians studying Ottoman port-cities. I have attempted to broaden our understanding of urban history by putting emphasis on the intricate relations between city and country and the impact one would have on the other. To put differently, by situating the history of Izmir in the broader context of Ottoman environmental history, I have proposed that urban history cannot be understood and written separate from the natural world in which it occurs and discussed the possibility of combining political, social, and economic histories of Izmir with environmental history to understand the ways the city interacted with its natural environment. In this respect, I have offered an original look through the lens of environmental history and demonstrated that environmental history can greatly expand the toolbox of social, economic, and urban historians to re-interpret histories of cities on the Ottoman Mediterranean.  223    

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources a. Archival Sources Archives du Chambre de Commerce de Marseille, Marseille Archives Économiques et Financières, Paris Archives National Français, Paris Archives du Ministere des Affaires étrangères, Paris Affaires étrangères Correspondance Consulaire Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul Divan (Beylikçi) Kalemi Sadaret Mektubi Mühimme Kalemi Sadaret Mektubi Kalemi Nezaret ve Deva’ir Evrakı Sadaret Mektubi Kalemi Umum Vilayat Evrakı Dahiliye Nezâreti İdare Evrakı Dahiliye Nezareti Sicill-i Ahvâl Komisyonu Defterleri İrâde Meclis-i Vâlâ İrâde – Dahiliye İrâde Meclis-i Vükelâ Mühimme Defterleri Maliye Nezareti, Ceride Odası Maliye Nezareti Meclis-i Vala Evrakı The National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C The National Archives, London Board of Trade Foreign Office State Paper Offıce Accounts and Papers House of Common Papers b. Governmental and Private Documents and Reports  224    

Agricultural Machinery in the Several Countries. Washington D.C: Government Printing Office, 1885. Cotton Culture in New or Partially Developed Sources of Supply: Report of Proceedings. Manchester: Manchester Cotton Supply Association, 1862. Düstur 1. Tertib MacGregor, John. Commercial Statistics. 2 vols. London: Charles Knight and Co., 1844. Monthly Consular and Trade Reports Proceedings of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. Ravndall, Gabriel Bie. Turkey: A Commercial and Industrial Handbook. Washington D.C: Government Print Office, 1926. Rolleston, George. Report on Smyrna. London: Great Britain War Office, 1856. United States Consular Reports

c. Newspapers and Magazines American Monthly Magazine Banker’s Magazine Ceride-i Havadis Economist Eliza Cook’s Journal Engineer Fraser’s Magazine Gazette de France Harper’s New Monthly Magazine Illustrated London News Journal de Smyrne Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. Journal of the Society of Arts L’echo d’Orient La Presse Le Génie Civil Levant Trade Review Merchant’s Magazine and Commercial Review Morning Chronicle New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal New York Times  225    

Österreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient Railway Record Railway Times Takvim-i Vekayi Times (London) Ziraat Gazetesi d. Annual Registers and Almanacs Annual Register Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın. Aydın: Vilayet Matbaası, 1882. Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın. Aydın: Vilayet Matbaası, 1891. Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın. Istanbul, 1896. Salnâme-i Vilayet-i Aydın. Istanbul, 1901. e. Printed Primary Sources A Hand-book for Travelers in the Ionian Islands, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, and Constantinople, 2nd ed. London: J. Murray, 1845. Arundell, Francis Vyvyan Jago. Discoveries in Asia Minor. 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1834. Brand, Helen W. Over Arab Lands. Dundee: Dundee Advertiser Office, 1867. Brayer, A. Neuf années à Constantinople. 2 vols. Paris: Bellizard, Barthès, Dufour et Lowell, 1836. Bruyn, Cornelis de. Voyage au Levant. 2 vols. Paris: La Haye, P. Gosse & J. Neaulme, 1725. Bulard, Arsène F. De la peste orientale: d’après les matériaux, recueillis à Alexandrie, au Caire, à Smyrne et à Constantinople, pendant les années 18331838. Paris: Béchet Jeune et Labé, 1839. Chandler, Richard. Travels in Asia Minor, and Greece. London: Booker and Priestley, 1817. Clark, Hyde. The History of the British Colony at Smyrna. Istanbul, 1860. Cochran, William. Pen and Pencil in Asia Minor; or Notes from the Levant. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1887. Cockerell, Samuel Pepys, ed. Travels in Southern Europe and the Levant, 1810-1817. The Journal of C. R. Cockerell, R. A. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903. Collingwood, Francis and John Woolams. The Universal Cook and City and Country Housekeeper. London: R. Noble, 1792. Cuinet, Vital. La Turquie d’Asie: géographie administrative, statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l’Asie mineure. 4 vols. Paris: Leroux, 1894.  226    

D’Arvieux, Laurent. Mémoires de Chevalier d’Arvieux. Paris: Charles-Jean-Baptiste Delespine, 1735. D’Estourmel, Joseph, Comte. Journal d‘un Voyage en Orient. Paris: Crapelet, 1848. De Bruyn, Corneille. Voyage au Levant, c’est-à-dire dans les principaux endroits de l’Asie Mineure, dans les isles de Chio, de Rhodes, de Chypre, etc., de même que dans les plus considérables villes d’Egypte, de Syrie et de la Terre Sainte. Delft, The Netherlands: H. de Kroonevelt, 1700. De la Porte, Joseph. Le voyageur françois, ou la connaissance de l’ancien et du nouveau Monde. 2 vols. Paris: Cellot, 1771. De Valon, Alexis. Une année dans le Levant. 2 vols. Paris: Jules Labitte, 1846. De Vere, Aubrey. Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey. 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1850. Egmond, Johannes Aegidius van. Travels through Part of Europe, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Archipelago, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mount Sinai, etc. 2 vols. London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1759 Eisen, Gustave. The Raisin Industry. San Francisco: H. S. Crocker and Co., 1890. Evliya Çelebi. Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. 9 vols. Istanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1935. Farley, James Lewis. The Resources of Turkey. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862. Fuller, John. Narratives of a Tour through some Parts of the Turkish Empire. London: John Murray, 1830. Galt, John. Letters from the Levant. London: Cadell and Davies, 1813. Georgiadès, Démétrius. Smyrne et l’Asie mineure au point de vue économique et commercial. Paris: Lévy, 1895. Griffiths, John. Travels in Europe, Asia Minor, and Arabia. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1805. Hamilton, William John. Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1842. Haskoll, W. Davis. Railways in the East and All High Thermometrical Regions. London: Atchley and Co., 1864. Hasselquist, Frederick and Charles Linneæus, Voyages and Travels in the Levant in the Years 1749, 50, 51, 52. London: Davis and Reymers, 1766. Hobhouse, John Cam. A Journey through Albania, and Other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia to Constantinople during the Years 1809 and 1810. 2 vols. London: Cawthorn, 1813. Hughes, William. A Manual of European Geography. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1856. Hunter, William. Travels through France, Turkey, and Hungary to Vienna in 1792. 2 vols. London: J. White, 1803. Iconomos, Constantinos and Bonaventure F. Slaars. Etude sur Smyrne. Izmir: B. Taitikan, 1868.  227    

Jollife, Thomas Robert. Narrative of an Excursion from Corfu to Smyrna. London: Black, Young, and Young, 1827. Jowett, William. Christian Researches in the Mediterranean from 1815 to 1820. London: R. Watts, 1824. Katip Çelebi. Cihannüma. Istanbul: 1729 Kinglake, Alexander William. Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East. Auburn, NY: J.C Derby & Co., 1845. Knight, William. Oriental Outlines, or a Rambler’s Collections of a Tour in Turkey, Greece & Tuscany in 1838. London: Sampson Low, 1839. MacFarlane, Charles. Constantinople in 1828, A Residence of Sixteen Months in the Turkish Capital and Provinces. London: Saunders and Otley, 1829. MacGill, Thomas. Travels in Turkey, Italy, and Russia. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1808. Madden, Richard Robert. Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine. 2 vols. London: Colburne, 1829. Marmier, Xavier. Impressions et souvenirs d’un voyageur chrétien. Tours: Alfred Mame et fils, 1873. Michaud, Joseph François and Jean Joseph François Poujoulat. Correspondance d’Orient (1830-1831). 2 vols. Brussels: J. P. Meline, 1835. Michelsen, Edward H. The Ottoman Empire and its Resources, 2nd ed. London: William Spooner, 1854. Miller, Horace E., ed. The Ottoman Land Code, Translated by F. Ongley. London: W. Clowes and Sons, 1892. Morawitz, Charles. Les finances de la Turquie. Paris: Guillaumin et cie, 1902. Murray, Hugh. An Encyclopedia of Geography. London: Longman, 1834. Neilson, Andrew. The Crimea: Its Towns, Inhabitants, and Social Customs. London: Partridge, Oakey, and Co., 1855. Ottoman Railway Company. The Ottoman Railway from Smyrna to Aidin of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, Statutes of the Company. London, 1856. Pococke, Richard. A Description of the East and Some Other Countries. 2 vols. London: Bowyer, 1745. Pressel, Wilhelm von. Les chemins de fer en Turquie d’Asie; projet d’un réseau complet. Zurich: Orell Füssli, 1902. Ramsay, William Mitchell. The Historical Geography of Asia Minor. 1890. Reprint, Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1962. Rennell, James. A Treatise on the Comparative Geography of Western Asia. 2 vols. London: Rivington, 1831. Riedesell, Johann Hermann von. Bemerkungen auf einer Reise nach der Levante. Leipzig: Fritsch, 1774. Rougon, Firmin. Smyrne: Situation Commerciale et Économique. Paris: Berger Levrault, 1892.  228    

Saint-Martin, Vivien de. Description de Géographie de L’Asie Mineure. Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1852. Sandwich, John Montagu, Earl of. A Voyage Performed by the Late Earl of Sandwich Round the Mediterranean in the Years 1738 and 1739. London: Lackington, 1807. Scherzer, Karl von. Smyrna: Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die geographischen, wirtschaftlichen und intellektuellen Verhältnisse von Vorder-Kleinasien. Vienna: Alfred Hö lder, 1873. Schmidt, Hermann. Das Eisenbahnwesen in der asiatischen Türkei. Berlin: Franz Siemenroth, 1914. Semple, Robert. Observations on A Journey through Spain and Italy to Naples; and thence to Smyrna and Constantinople. 2 vols. London: C. and R. Baldwin, 1807. Senior, Nassau W. A Journal Kept in Turkey and Greece in the Autumn of 1857 and the Beginning of 1858. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859. Seward, Oliver Risley, ed. William H. Seward’s Travels around the World. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1873. Sonnini, Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert. Travels in Greece and Turkey. 2 vols. London: T.N. Longman & O. Rees, 1801. Stephenson, Rowland Macdonald. Railways in Turkey. London: John Weale, 1859. Storari, Luigi. Guida con cenni Storici di Smirne. Turin, 1857. Taeschner, Franz. Das anatolische Wegenetz nach osmanischen Quellen. 2 vols. Leipzig: Mayer & Müller, 1924-26. Tancoigne, Joseph M. Voyage à Smyrne, dans l’archipel et l’île de Candie, en 1811, 1812, 1813 et 1814. 2 vols. Paris: Nepveu, 1817. The Joint Stocks Companies’ Directory for 1867. London: Charles Barker & Sons, 1867. The Manchester Commercial List 1867-1868, First and Second Years. London: Estell & Co., 1867. Thévenot, Jean. Relation d’un voyage fait au Levant. Paris: Joly, 1664. Tollot, Jean Baptiste. Nouveau Voyage fait au Levant dès années 1731 & 1732. Paris: Cailleau, 1742. Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de. Relation d’un voyage du Levant. 2 vols. Paris: L’imprimerie Royal, 1717. Traill, Henry Duff. The Picturesque Mediterranean. 3 vols. Cassell, 1890. Tredgold, Thomas. “Steam Corn-Mills Erected at Smyrna and Worked by Engines Recently Constructed by W. Joyce and Co. of Greenwich.” In The Principles and Practice and Explanation of the Steam Engine, Including Pumping, Stationary, and Marine Engines, Vol. III, edited by Thomas Tredgold, 1-8. London: John Weale, 1852-53. Ubicini, Abdolonyme. Letters on Turkey. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1856.  229    

Urquhart, David. The Spirit of the East. 2 vols. London: Henry Colburn, 1839. Van Egmond, Johannes Aegidius and Johannes Heyman, Travels Through Part of Europe, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Archipelago, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mount Sinai, etc. 2 vols. London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1759. Van Lennep, Henry John. Travels in Little Known Parts of Asia Minor. 2 vols. New York: Van Lennep, 1870. Velay, Antonin du. Essai sur l’Histoire Financiere de la Turquie. Paris: Rousseau, 1903. Watts, Isaac. The Cotton Supply Association: Its Origin and Progress. Manchester: Tubbs & Brook, 1871. Watts, John. The Facts of the Cotton Famine. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1866. Wilkinson, Charles. A Tour through Asia Minor and the Greek Islands. London: Darton and Harvey, 1806. Wilson, William Rae. Travels in the Holy Land, Egypt, etc. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847. Secondary Sources “Transportation.” In Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire, edited by. Selçuk Akşin Somel, 303. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2003. Ahmad, Feroz. The Making of Modern Turkey. London: Routledge, 1993. Akdağ, Mustafa. Türk Halkının Dirlik ve Düzenlik Kavgası: “Celalı̂ İsyanları”. Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1975. Akın, Himmet. Aydınoğulları Tarihi Hakkında Bir Araştırma. Istanbul: Pulhan Matbaası, 1946. Aktepe, M. Münir. “İzmir Hanları ve Çarşıları Hakkında Ön Bilgi.” İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi 25 (1971): 105-54. Akyıldız, Ali. “Osmanlı Anadolusunda İlk Demiryolu: İzmir-Aydın Hattı (18561866).” In Çağını Yakalayan Osmanlı: Osmanlı Devleti'nde Modern Haberleşme ve Ulaştırma Teknikleri, edited by Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Mustafa Kaçar, 249-70. Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art, and Culture, 1995. Alonso, William. “Location Theory.” In Regional Development and Planning, edited by John Friedmann and William Alonso, 78-106. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Ambraseys, Nicholas N. and Caroline Finkel. The Seismicity of Turkey and Adjacent Areas: A Historical Review, 1500-1800. Istanbul: Eren, 1995. Ambraseys, Nicholas N. Earthquakes in the Mediterranean and Middle East: A Multidisciplinary Study of Seismicity up to 1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

 230    

Amphoux, Marcel. “Géographie portuaire et économie portuaire.” Revue de La Porte Océane 7, no. 70 (1951): 5-8. ----------. “Ports intérieurs et ports extérieurs.” Revue de La Porte Océane 6, no. 61 (1950): 5-7. ----------. “Des horizons terrestres aux horizons maritimes de l’activité portuaire.” Revue de La Porte Océane 6, no. 57 (1950): 15-18. ----------. “Les fonctions portuaires.” Revue de La Porte Océane 5, no. 54 (1949): 1922. Anagnostopoulou, Sia. Mikrá Asía, 19os ai.-1919: oi ellênorthódoxes koinótêtes: apó to Millét tôn Rômiôn sto ellênikó éthnos. Athens: Ellenika Grammata, 1988. Andersson, Åke E. and David Emanuel Andersson. Gateways to the Global Economy. Cheltenham UK: Edward Elgar, 2000. Argyropoulos, Roxane. “La communauté grecque de Smyrne au temps des lumieres.” Etudes Balkaniques 1 (2002): 110-15. Arıcanlı, Tosun. “Property, Land, and Labor in Nineteenth-Century Anatolia.” In Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East, edited by Çağlar Keyder and Faruk Tabak, 123-34. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991. Arıkan, Zeki and Abdullah Martal, “İzmir’de Buharlı Un Fabrikası,” Güney Doğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi 12 (1998): 1-22. Arıkan, Zeki. “İzmir in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” In Three Ages of Izmir, edited by Enis Batur, 59-69. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1993. ----------. “Storari’nin Kemeraltı Planı.” İzmir Kent Kültürü Dergisi 4 (2001): 76-80. Atay, Çınar. Kapanan Kapılar: İzmir Hanları. Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Yayınları, 2003. Atilla, Nedim. İzmir Demiryolları. Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2002. Bagwell, Philip S. The Transport Revolution, 1770-1985. London: Routledge, 1988. Bankoff, Greg, Uwe Lü bken, and Jordan Sand. “Introduction.” In Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World, edited by Greg Bankoff, Uwe Lü bken, and Jordan Sand, 1-22. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. Barkan, Ömer Lütfi. “Türk Toprak Hukuku Tarihinde Tanzimat ve 1274 (1858) Tarihli Arazi Kanunnamesi.” In Tanzimat, 301-52. Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1940. Barnai, Jacob. “The Origins of the Jewish Community in Izmir in the Ottoman Period.” Pe’amim 12, (1982): 47-58. Başaran, Mehmet. “Büyük Menderes Nehri Efsaneleri ve 19. Yüzyılda Nehir Ulaşımı Projesi.” Toplumsal Tarih 54 (1998): 49-51. Baskıcı, Murat. “Osmanlı Tarımında Makineleşme: 1870-1914.” Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi 58, no. 1 (2003): 29-53. Bauer, Walter. Foreign Production, Trade, and Government Aid in the Raisin and Currant Industry. Berkeley: University of California, 1933.  231    

Baykara, Tuncer. İzmir Şehri Tarihi. Izmir: Ege University, 1974. Beavon, Keith Sidney Orrock. Central Place Theory: A Reinterpretation. London: Longman, 1977. Bektaş, Yakup. “The Imperial Ottoman Izmir-to-Aydin Railway: The British Experimental Line in Asia Minor.” In Science, Technology and Industry in the Ottoman World, edited by Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Ahmed Djebbar, and Feza Günergun, 139-52. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000. Berber, Engin. Sancılı Yıllar--İzmir 1918-1922: Mütareke ve Yunan İşgali Döneminde İzmir Sancağı. Ankara: Ayraç Yayınevi, 1997. Berkant, Cenk. “Italian Architects in Smyrna.” In The Presence of Italian Architects in Mediterranean Countries, edited by Pietro Gagliomo, 329-31. Florence: Maschietto Editore, 2008. Berry, Brian Joe Lobley, H. Gardiner Barnum, and Allen Pred. Central Place Studies: A Bibliography of Theory and Applications. Philadelphia: Regional Science Research Institute, 1965. Beyru, Rauf. 19. Yüzyılda İzmir’de Doğal Afetler. Izmir: İ zmir Bü yü kş ehir Belediyesi, 2011. ----------. 19. Yüzyılda İzmir’de Sağlık Sorunları ve Yaşam. Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2005. Bilget, Adnan. Son Yüzyılda İzmir Şehri. Izmir: Meşher Basımevi, 1949. Bilgi, Nejdet. “1842 Yılında Saruhan Sancağı’nın Nüfusu ve İdari Bölünüşü,” Manisa Araştırmaları 1 (2001): 87-122. ----------. “Tanzimât’ın Öncesinde ve Sonrasında Saruhan Sancağı’nda Nüfus.” In Prof. Dr. İsmail Aka Armağanı, edited by Özer Küpeli, 249-90. Izmir: Beta, 1999. Bilsel, Cânâ. “A Specific Urban Form Between Sea and City: The ‘Frank Quarter’ of Izmir.” In ISUF 1999: Transformations of Urban Form: From Interpretations to Methodologies in Practice, edited by Roberto Corona and Gian Luigi Maffei, 8-11. Florence: Alinea, 1999. ----------. “Cultures et fonctionnalités: l’évolution de la morphologie urbaine de la ville d’Izmir aux XIXème et début XXème siècles.” Paris: Université Paris X Ph.D. Diss., 1996. ----------. “The Ottoman Port City of Izmir in the 19th Century: Cultures, Modes of Space Production and the Transformation of Urban Space.” In 7 Centuries of Ottoman Architecture “A Supra-National Heritage,” edited by Afife Batur, 225-33. Istanbul: Yapı Endüstri Merkezi, 1999. Bird, James H. Seaports and Seaport Terminals. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1971. ----------. The Major Seaports of the United Kingdom. London: Hutchinson, 1963. Boerman, Willem E. “The Need for Special Examination of Particular Aspects of Port Geography.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 42 (December 1951): 347-49.

 232    

Böke, Pelin. “İzmir Karantina Teşkilatının Kuruluşu ve Faaliyetleri (1840-1900).” Çağdaş Türkiye Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi 8, no. 18-19 (Spring-Fall 2009): 137-59. Bora, Siren. İzmir Yahudileri Tarihi: 1908-1923. Istanbul: Gözlem Gazetecilik Basın ve Yayın, 1995. Bulliet, Richard W. The Camel and the Wheel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. Bulmuş, Birsen. Plague, Quarantines and Geopolitics in the Ottoman Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Burghardt, Andrew F. “A Hypothesis About Gateway Cities.” Annals, Association of American Geographers 61, no. 2 (June 1971): 269-85. Çakır, Coşkun. “Temettuat.” In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gabor Agoston and Bruce Masters, 558-59. New York: Facts on File, 2008. Çakmak, Zafer. İzmir ve Çevresinde Yunan İşgali ve Rum Mezalimi, 1919-1922 Istanbul: Yeditepe, 2007. Çelebi, Mevlüt. “19. Yüzyılda İzmir’de İtalyan Cemaati.” Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 22, no. 1 (July 2007): 19-51. Çelik, Bülent. “Gerçekleşmemiş Bir Yol Hikayesi: 19. Yüzyıl’ın Son Çeyreğinde Menderes Nehrinin Ulaşıma Açılması Projesi.” Ankara Üniversitesi Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi 34, no. 38 (2005): 113-30. Cezar, Mustafa. “Türk Tarihinde Kervansaray.” VIII. Türk Tarih Kongresi (11-13 Ekim 1976). Vol II. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1981. ----------. Typical Commercial Buildings of the Ottoman Classical Period and the Ottoman Construction System. Istanbul: İş Bankası Yayınları, 1983. Christaller, Walter. Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland: Eine ökonomischgeographische Untersuchung über die Gesetzmässigkeit der Verbreitung und Entwicklung der Siedlungen mit städtischen Funktionen. Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1933. Çizakça, Murat. “Incorporation of the Middle East into the European WorldEconomy.” Review 8, no. 3 (Winter 1985): 353-78. Clay, Christopher. “Labour Migration and Economic Conditions in NineteenthCentury Anatolia.” Middle Eastern Studies 34, no. 4 (October 1998): 1-32. Cooke, Brian. The Grand Crimean Central Railway: The Railway That Won a War The Story of the Railway Built at Balaklava by the British during the Crimean War. Cheshire, UK: Cavalier House, 1990. Cooper, Frederick. On the African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial Mombasa. New Haven, MA: Yale University Press, 1987. Cosgrove, Denis. Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008. Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1991.  233    

Cuthell, David Cameron, Jr. “The Muhacirin Komisyonu: An Agent in the Transformation of the Ottoman Anatolia (1860– 1866).” New York: Columbia University Ph.D. Diss, 2005. Davison, Roderic H. Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. Desfor, Gene and Jennefer Laidley, eds. Reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Dicken, Peter. Global Shift: Industrial Change in a Turbulent World. London: Harper & Row, 1986. Dols, Michael W. The Black Death in the Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977. Dovey, Kim, et al. Fluid City: Transforming Melbourne’s Urban Waterfront. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005. Drbohlav, Dušan and Ludek Sýkora. “Gateway Cities in the Process of Regional Integration in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Prague.” In Migration, Free Trade and Regional Integration in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Gudrun Biffl, 181-213. Vienna: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1997. Drennan, Matthew P. “Gateway Cities: The Metropolitan Sources of U.S. Producer Services Exports.” Urban Studies 29, no. 2 (April 1992): 217-35. Driessen, Henk. “Mediterranean Port-Cities: Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered.” History and Anthropology 16, no. 1 (2005): 129-41. Dunwell, Frances F. “Foreword.” in Environmental History of the Hudson River Human Uses that Changed the Ecology, Ecology that Changed Human Uses, edited by Robert E. Henshaw, ix-xii. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Dursun, Selçuk. “Forest and the State: History of Forestry and Forest in the Ottoman Empire.” Istanbul: Sabancı University Ph.D. Diss., 2007. Edwards, J. A. “The Swansea City-Region: A Case Study of a Gateway System.” Geography 65, no. 2 (April 1980): 81-94 Eldem, Edhem. “Batılılaşma, Modernleşme ve Kozmopolitizm: 19. Yüzyıl Sonu ve 20. Yüzyıl Başında İstanbul.” In Osman Hamdi Bey ve Dönemi, edited by Zeynep Rona, 12-26. Istanbul, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1993. Eldem, Edhem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, eds., The Ottoman City between East and West, Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Elliott, N. R. “Hinterland and Foreland as Illustrated by the Port of Tyne.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47 (1969): 153-70. Eren, Ahmet Cevat. Türkiye’de Göç ve Göçmen Meseleleri. Istanbul: Nurgök Matbaası, 1966. Ersoy, Bozkurt. “İzmir Hanları ve Üzerine Tespit ve İncelemeler.” Ankara Üniversitesi Dil Tarih Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 32, no. 1-2 (1988): 97-103. ----------. İzmir Hanları. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1981.  234    

Eyice, Semavi. “Bedesten.” In Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 5, 30211. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1992. ----------. “Les bedestens dans l’architecture Turque.” In Atti del secondo Congresso internazionale di arte turca, 113-17. Naples: Istituto universitario orientale, Seminario di turcologia, 1965. Falbos, Filippos. “Bezestenia kai chania sti Smirni.” Mikroasiatika Chronika 6 (1961): ??-??. ----------. “O Frangomahalas tis Smymis kai ta Frangochiotika vivlia.” Mikrasiatika Chronika 8 (1969): 173-225. Farnie, Douglas Antony. The English Cotton Industry and the World Cotton market, 1815-1896. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979. Faroqhi, Suraiya. “Camels, Wagons, and the Ottoman State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 14 (1982): 523-39. ----------. “Crisis and Change, 1590-1699.” In An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire. 3 vols, edited by Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert, 411-636. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Findley, Carter Vaughn. “The Tanzimat.” In Turkey in the Modern World. vol. 4 of The Cambridge History of Turkey. edited by Kate Fleet, Suraiya Faroqhi, and Reşat Kasaba, 11-37. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Finnie, David H. Pioneers East. The Early American Experience in the Middle East. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. Fisher, Alan W. “Emigration of Muslims from the Russian Empire in the Years after the Crimean War.” In A Precarious Balance: Conflict, Trade, and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier, edited by Alan W. Fisher (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 1999). Frangakis-Syrett, Elena. “British Economic Activities in Izmir in the Second Half of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” New Perspectives on Turkey 56 (Fall 1992): 200-5. ----------. “Commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries: The City-Port of Izmir and Its Hinterland.” International Journal of Maritime History 10, no. 2 (December 1998): 126-36. ----------. “Commercial Growth and Economic Development in the Middle East: Izmir, from the Early 18th to the Early 20th Centuries.” In Ottoman Izmir, edited by Maurits H. van den Boogert, 1-38. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2007. ----------.“Concurrence commercial et financière entre les pays occidentaux à Izmir.” In Enjeux et Rapports de Force en Turquie et en Méditerranée orientale, edited by Jacques Thobie, Roland Pérez and Salgur Kançal, 117-27. Istanbul: Institut Franç ais d’études Anatoliennes Georges Dumézil, 1996. ----------. “Implementation of the 1838 Anglo-Turkish Convention on Izmir’s Trade: European and Minority Merchants.” New Perspectives on Turkey 7 (Spring 1992): 91-112.

 235    

----------. “Le développement d’un port méditerranéen d’importance internationale: Smyrne (1700-1914).” In Smyrne, la ville oubliée? Mémoires d’un grand port ottoman, edited by Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis, 21-49. Paris: Éditions Autrement, 2006. ----------. “Monoculture in Nineteenth-Century Greece and the Port-City of Patras.” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 20, no. 2 (1994): 9-34. ----------. “Patras.” Review 16 (Fall 1993): 411-34. ----------. “The Economic Activities of Ottoman and Western Communities in Eighteenth-Century Izmir.” Oriento Moderno 18, (1/1999): 11-26. ----------. “The Making of an Ottoman Port. The Quay of Izmir in the Nineteenth Century.” The Journal of Transport History 22, no. 1 (March 2001): 23-46. ----------. “The Port of Smyrna in the Nineteenth Century.” In Southeast European Maritime Commerce and Naval Policies from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to 1914, edited by Apostolos Vakalopoulos, Konstantinos Svolopoulos, and Béla Király, 260-72. Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1988. ----------. “The Trade of Cotton and Cloth in Izmir: From the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century to the Early Nineteenth Century.” In Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East, edited by Çağlar Keyder and Faruk Tabak, 97-111. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991. ----------. “Western and Local Entrepreneurs in Izmir in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” In Son Yüzyıllarda İzmir ve Batı Anadolu Uluslararası Sempozyumu Bildirileri, edited by Tuncer Baykara, 77-92. Izmir: Akademi, 1994. ----------. The Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700-1820). Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992. Frangakis, Elena. “The Ottoman Port of Izmir in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, 1695-1820.” Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée 39, no. 1 (1985): 149-62. Franklin, Wayne and Michael Steiner. “Taking Place: Toward the Regrounding of American Studies.” In Mapping American Culture, edited by Wayen Franklin and Michael Steiner, 3-23. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. French, David. Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor. Oxford, UK: British Archeological Reports, 1988. Fuhrmann, Malte. “Cosmopolitan Imperialists and the Ottoman Port Cities: Conflicting Logics in the Urban Social Fabric.” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 67 (2003): 149-63. Gekas, Athanasios. “Class and Cosmopolitanism: The Historiographical Fortunes of Merchants in Eastern Mediterranean Ports.” Mediterranean Historical Review 24, no. 2 (December 2009): 95-114. Genç, Mehmet. “Ottoman Industry in the Eighteenth Century: General Framework, Characteristics, and Main Trends.” In Manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, 1500-1900, edited by Donald Quataert, 59-86. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.

 236    

Georgelin, Hervé. La Fin de Smyrne: Du Cosmopolitisme aux Nationalismes. Paris: CNRS, 2005. Geyikdağı, V. Necla. Foreign Investment in the Ottoman Empire. London, I. B. Tauris, 2011. Goffman, Daniel. “Izmir: From Village to Colonial City.” In The Ottoman City between East and West, edited by Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, 79-134. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). ----------. Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550-1650. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990. Gökbel, Asaf and Hikmet Şahin. Aydın İli Tarihi. Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1936. Gordon, Leland J. American Relations with Turkey, 1830-1930: An Economic Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1931. Gräf, Erwin. Die Geschichte eines Chan’s in Smyrna. Eine wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studie. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 1955. Griswold, William. “Climatic Change: A Possible Factor in the Social Unrest of Seventeenth Century Anatolia.” In Humanist and Scholar: Essays in Honor of Andreas Tietze, edited by Heath W. Lowry and Donald Quataert, 37-57. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993. ----------. The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 1591-1611. Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1983. Güneş, Günver. Tarihsel Süreçte Aydın. Aydın: Aydın Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2012. ----------. “Osmanlı Devleti’nde Meyan Kökü Tarımı ve Ticareti (1840-1912).” Kebikeç 18 (2004): 343-61. Güran, Ceyhan. Türk Hanlarının Gelişimi ve İstanbul Hanları Mimarisi. Istanbul: Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü, 1978. Güran, Tevfik. “Ondokuzuncu Yüzyıl Ortalarında Ödemiş Kasabasının SosyoEkonomik Özellikleri.” İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 41, no. 1-4 (1985): 301-19. ----------. 19. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Tarımı. Istanbul: Eren, 1998. Habiçoğlu, Bedri. Kafkasya’dan Anadolu’ya Göçler. Istanbul: Nart Yayıncılık, 1993. Halaçoğlu, Yusuf. XVIII. Yüzyılda Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda İskân Siyaseti ve Aşiretlerin Yerleştirilmesi. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1988. Hastaoglou-Martinidis, Vilma. “Les villes-ports du bassin oriental de la Méditerranée à la fin du XIX siècle: Travaux portuaires et transformations urbaines.” In Petites et grandes villes du bassin Mediterranéen, edited by Colette Vallat. 507-25. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1988. ----------. “The Cartography of Harbor Construction in Eastern Mediterranean Cities: Technical and Urban Modernization in the Late Nineteenth Century.” In Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day, edited by Biray Kolluoğlu and Meltem Toksöz, 78-99. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Hathaway, Jane. Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem. London: Oneworld Publications, 2005.  237    

Henderson, William Otto. The Lancashire Cotton Famine 1861-65. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934. Hilling, David. “The Evolution of the Major Ports of West Africa.” Geographical Journal 135 (1969): 365-79. Hobsbawn, Eric J. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971. Hou, Feng and Larry S. Bourne. Population Movement Into and Out of Canada’s Immigrant Gateway Cities: A Comparative Analysis of Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver. Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2004. Hou, Feng. “The Migration-Immigration Link in Canada’s Gateway Cities: A Comparative Study of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.” Environment and Planning 38, no. 8 (Spring 2004): 1505-25. Hovannisian, Richard G. Armenian Smyrna/Izmir: The Aegean Communities. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2012. Hoyle, Brian S. “East African Seaports: An Application of the Concept of ‘Anyport’.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44 (1968): 163-83. ----------. “Maritime Perspectives on Ports and Port System: The Case of East Africa.” In Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th-20th Centuries, edited by Frank Broeze, 188-93. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. ----------. The Seaports of East Africa: A Geographical Study. Nairobi: East African Pub. House, 1967. Hoyle, Brian S. and David A. Pinder, eds. European Port Cities in Transition. London: Belhaven Press, 1992. Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter. “Ecology of the Ottoman Lands.” In The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839. vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of Turkey, edited by Kate Fleet, Suraiya N. Faroqhi, and Reşat Kasaba, 18-43. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Ilbert, Robert. “Alexandrie cosmopolite?.” In Villes ottomanes à la fin de l’Empire, edited by Paul Dumont and François Georgeon, 171-85. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992. İlter, İsmet. Tarihi Türk Hanları. Ankara: Karayolları Genel Müdürlüğü, 1969. Inal, Onur. “Environmental History as an Emerging Field in Ottoman Studies: An Historiographical Overview.” Journal of Ottoman Studies 38 (2011): 1-25. İnalcık, Halil. “Tanzimat’ın Uygulanması ve Sosyal Tepkileri.” Belleten 28, no. 112 (1964): 660-71. İnalcık, Halil. “The Hub of the City: The Bedestan of Istanbul.” International Journal of Turkish Studies 1, no. 1 (1979-80): 1-17. İnalcık, Halil. “The Rise of the Turcoman Maritime Principalities in Anatolia, Byzantium, and the Crusades.” In The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy and Society, 309-41. Bloomington: Indiana University Turkish Studies, 1993.

 238    

İpek, Nedim. “Türk-Yunan Nüfus Meselesi.” In XII. Türk Tarih Kongresi, Ankara 4-8 Ekim 1999 Kongre’ye Sunulan Bildiriler. 3 vols., 472-75. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2002). Irmak, Kemal. Manisa Tarihi. Istanbul, Ülkü Basımevi, 1937. İslamoğlu, Huri. “Property as a Contested Domain: A Reevaluation of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858.” In New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East, edited by Roger Owen, 3-62. Cambridge, MA: Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, 2000. Issawi, Charles. An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. ----------. The Economic History of Turkey, 1800-1914. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Jamgocyan, Onnik. “Une famille de financiers arméniens au XVIIIe siècle: les Serpos.” In Les villes dans L’Empire Ottoman: Activités et sociétés. 2 vols., edited by Daniel Panzac, 365-90. Paris: C.N.R.S., 1991. Johnston, Ronald John. City and Society: An Outline for Urban Geography. London: Hutchinson, 1984. Kahya, Esin. “Türkiye’nin İlk Demiryolları.” Belleten 52, no. 202 (April 1988), 20918. Kamilakis, Panagiotis. “Συντεχνίες και επαγγέλµατα στη Σµύρνη πριν από τα µέσα του 19ου αιώνα, µε βάση αρχειακές κυρίως πηγές.” Mikrasiatika Chronika 20 (1998): 191-93. Karakışla, Yavuz Selim. “Osmanlı’da İlk Banka: İzmir Bankası (1842).” Toplumsal Tarih 74 (February 2000): 46-49. Karal, Enver Ziya. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda İlk Nüfus Sayımı. Ankara: Başvekalet İstatistik Umum Müdürlüğü, 1943. Karpat, Kemal. “Population Movements in the Ottoman State in the 19th Century: An Outline,” Collection Turcica 3 (1983): 385-428. ----------. Ottoman Population, 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Kasaba, Reşat, Çağlar Keyder, and Faruk Tabak. “Eastern Mediterranean Port Cities and Their Bourgeoisies: Merchants, Political Projects, and Nation-States.” Review 10, no. 1 (Summer 1986): 121-35. Kasaba, Reşat. “Migrant Labor in Western Anatolia.” In Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East, edited by Çağlar Keyder and Faruk Tabak, 319-31. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991. ----------. “XIX. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında İzmir’de Bir İngiliz Bankası: İzmir Ticaret Bankası.” Tarih ve Toplum 8, no. 43 (1987): 57-60. ----------. Migrants and Refugees in the Ottoman Empire. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010. ----------. The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988.  239    

----------. “Incorporation of the Ottoman Empire, 1750-1820.” Review 10, no. 5/6 (Summer/Fall 1987): 805-47. Kayako, Hayashi and Mahir Aydın, eds. The Ottoman State and Societies in Change: A Study of the Nineteenth Century Temettuat Registers. London: Kegan Paul, 2004. Kechriotis, Vangelis. “Protecting the City’s Interest: The Greek-Orthodox and the Conflict Between Municipal and Vilayet Authorities in Izmir (Smyrna) in the Second Constitutional Period.” Mediterranean Historical Review 24, no. 2 (December 2009): 207-21. ----------. “The Greeks of Izmir at the End of the Empire: A Non-Muslim Ottoman Community between Autonomy and Patriotism.” Leiden: Leiden University Ph.D. Diss., 2005. Keyder, Çağlar. Y. Eyüp Özveren, and Donald Quataert, “Port-Cities in the Ottoman Empire. Some Theoretical and Historical Perspectives.” Review 16, no. 4 (Fall 1993): 519-57. King, Leslie J. Central Place Theory. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications, 1984. Kıray, Mübeccel. Örgütleşemeyen Kent: İzmir. 2nd ed. Istanbul: Bağlam, 1988. Kırımlı, Hakan. “Kırım’dan Türkiye’ye Kırım Tatar Göçleri,” In Uluslararası Göç Sempozyumu Bildirileri, 147-52. Istanbul: Zeytinburnu Belediyesi, 2006. Klingle, Matthew W. Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle. New Haven, MA: Yale University Press, 2007. Kolluoğlu, Biray and Meltem Toksöz. “Mapping Out the Eastern Mediterranean: Toward a Cartography of Cities of Commerce.” In Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day, edited by Biray Kolluoğlu and Meltem Toksöz, 1-13. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Kreiser, Klaus. “Bedesten-Bauten im Osmanischen Reich.” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 29 (1979): 367–400. ----------. “Über den ‘Kernraum’ – Beiträge des Forschunggemeinschaft edited by Klaus-Detlev Ruprecht, 1979.

des Osmanischen Reiches.” In Die Türkei in Europa Südosteuropa-Arbeitskreises der Deutschen zum IV. Internationalen Sudosteuropa-Kongreß, Grothusen, 53-63. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und

Kresl, Peter Karl. “Gateway Cities: A Comparison of North America with the European Community.” Ekistics 58 (1991): 352-6. Kurmuş, Orhan. “The Cotton Famine and its Effects on the Ottoman Empire.” In The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, edited by Huri İslamoğlu-İnan, 16069. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ----------. Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi, 2nd ed. Istanbul: Bilim Yayınları, 1977. Kütükoğlu, Mübahat. “İzmir Rıhtımı İnşaatı ve İşletme İmtiyazı.” İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi 32, no. 3 (March 1979): 495558. ----------. XV. ve XVI. Asırlarda İzmir Kazasının Sosyal ve İktisadi Yapısı. Izmir: Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2000.  240    

Kuzucu, Kemalettin. “1845 İzmir Yangını.” Toplumsal Tarih 11, no. 62 (February 1999): 20-25. Lee, Everett S. “A Theory of Migration,” Demography 3, no. 3 (1966): 47-57. Lemerle, Paul. L’émirat d’Aydın, Byzance et l’Occident: Recherches sur la “Geste d’Umur Pacha”. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957. Luther, Usha M. Historical Route Network of Anatolia (Istanbul-Izmir-Konya) 1550’s to 1850’s: A Methodological Study. Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 1989. Martal, Abdullah. Değişim Sürecinde İzmir’de Sanayileşme. Izmir: Dokuz Eylül Yayınları, 1999. Mayerhofer, Peter and Yvonne Wolfmayr-Schnitzer. “Gateway Cities in the Process of Regional Integration in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Vienna.” In Migration, Free Trade and Regional Integration in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Gudrun Biffl, 215-37. Vienna: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1997. McCarthy, Justin. Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 18211922. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995. McNeill, John R. “Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History.” History and Theory 42, no. 1 (2003): 5-43. McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1976. Mikhail, Alan. “The Nature of Plague in Late-Eighteenth-Century Egypt.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008): 249-75. ----------. Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Moralı, Nail. Mütarekede İzmir: Önceleri ve Sonraları. Istanbul: Tekin Yayınevi, 1976. Morgan, Frederick W. “Observations on the Study of Hinterlands in Europe,” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 42 (December 1951): 36673. ----------. Ports and Harbours. London: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1952. Müller-Wiener, Wolfgang. “Der Bazar von Izmir. Studien zur Geschichte und Gestalt des Wirtschaftszentrums einer ägäischen Handelsmetropole.” Mitteilungen der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft 27/28 (1980-81): 420-54. Murphey, Rhoads. “On the Evolution of the Port City.” In Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th-20th Centuries, edited by Frank Broeze, 223-45. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. Myllntaus, Timo. “Environment in Explaining History: Restoring Humans as Part of Nature,” In Encountering the Past in Nature: Essays in Environmental History. 2nd ed., edited by Timo Myllntaus and Mikko Saikku, 141-60. Athens, OH: University Press, 2001. Nagata, Yuzo. Tarihte Ayanlar. Karaosmanoğulları Üzerine Bir İnceleme. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1997. Nahum, Henri. İzmir Yahudileri, 19.-20. Yüzyıl. Istanbul: İletişim, 2000.  241    

Nash, Roderick. “American Environmental History: A New Teaching Frontier.” Pacific Historical Review 41 (1972): 362-72. Nezih, Raif. İzmir’in Tarihi. 2 vols. Izmir: Bilgi Matbaası, 1927. Orat, Jülide Akyüz, Nebahat Oran Arslan, and Mustafa Tanrıverdi. Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Kafkas Göçleri (1828-1943). Kars: Kafkas Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2011. Örenç, Ali Fuat. Balkanlarda İlk Dram: Unuttuğumuz Mora Türkleri ve Eyaletten Bağımsızlığa Yunanistan. Istanbul: Babıali Kü ltü r Yayıncılığ ı, 2009. Orhonlu, Cengiz. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Aşiretlerin İskanı. Istanbul: Eren, 1987. Ortaç, Hilal, Olcay Yapucu, and Cihan Özgün, eds., Değişim Sürecinde Aydın: XIX. Yüzyıldan Günümüze Sosyal ve Ekonomik Hayatın Dönüşümü. Aydın: Aydın Ticaret Odası, 2010. Ortaç, Hilal. “Batı Anadolu’da Büyük Toprak Sahibi Levanten: Baltacı Manolaki.” Ege Üniversitesi Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 25, no. 1 (July 2010): 319-36. Owen, Roger. “The 1838 Anglo-Turkish Convention: An Overview.” New Perspectives on Turkey 7 (Spring 1992): 7-14. ----------. The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914. London: Methuen, 1981. Özdeş, Gündüz. Türk Çarşıları. Istanbul: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Mimarlık Fakültesi, 1953. Özgün, Cihan. “Batı Anadolu’da Tarımsal İşgücü ve Ücretler (1844-1914).” Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi 5, no. 22 (Summer 2012): 319-31. ----------. “İzmir ve Artalanında Tarımsal Üretim ve Ticareti (1844-1914). Izmir: Ege University Ph.D. Diss., 2011. Öztürk, Adil Adnan. “Rumeli’den Aydın Vilâyeti’ne Yapılan Göçler ve Aydın Vilâyeti’ne Gelen Rumeli Muhacîrinin İskân ve İdâreleri Hakkında Talimat-ı Mahsusa.” Çağdaş Türkiye Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi 3, no. 9 (1999-2000): 123-31. Öztürk, Said. “Türkiye’de Temettuat Çalışmaları.” Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatur Dergisi 1, no. 1 (2003): 287-304. Pamuk, Şevket. “Evolution of the Ottoman Monetary System.” In An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 3 vols, edited by Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert, 947-80. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ----------. “Ottoman Interventionism in Economic and Monetary Affairs.” Revue d’histoire maghrebine 25 (1998): 361-67. ----------. “Türkiye’deki İlk Demiryolu: İzmir-Aydın.” Toplumsal Tarih 5 (1994): 3537. ----------. The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820-1913: Trade, Investment, and Production. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Panzac, Daniel. “La peste à Smyrne au XVIIIe siècle.” Annales. Sciences Sociales 4 (July-August 1973): 1071-93.  242    

----------. La peste dans l’empire Ottoman. Leuven: Éditions Peeters, 1985. Pearson, Michael N. “Littoral Society: The Case for the Coast.” The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History 7 (1985): 1-8. Pinson, Mark. “Russian Policy and the Emigration of the Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire, 1854-1862.” Güneydoğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi 1 (1972): 38-63. Pınar, İlhan. Osmanlı Dönemi’nde İzmir’de Bir Cemaat: İzmir’de Alman İzleri, 17521922 (Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2013. Porter, Dale H. The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology, and Society in Victorian London. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 1998. Price, Marie and Lisa Benton-Short, eds. Migrants to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Quataert, Donald. “Agricultural Trends and Government Policy in Ottoman Anatolia, 1800-1914.” Asian and African Studies 15 (1981): 69-84. ----------. The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Rees, Tom. Merchant Adventurers in the Levant. Two British Families of Privateers, Consuls and Traders 1700-1950. Stawell: Tablot, 2003. Reimer, Michael. “Ottoman-Arab Seaports in the Nineteenth Century: Social Change in Alexandria, Beirut, Tunis.” In Cities in the World-System, edited by Reşat Kasaba, 135-56. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. Robinson, R. “Modeling the Port as an Operational System: A Perspective for Research.” Economic Geography 52 (1976): 71-86. Rose, A. James. “Dissent from Down Under: Metropolitan Primacy as the Normal State.” Pacific Viewpoint 7 (1966): 1-27. Sargent, Arthur J. Seaports and Hinterlands. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1938. Sassen, Saskia. The Mobility of Capital and Labor: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988. Saydam, Abdullah. Kırım ve Kafkas Göçleri 1856-1876. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1997. Schiffer, Reinhold. Oriental Panorama: British Travelers in 19th Century Turkey. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999. Schmidt, Jan. From Anatolia to Indonesia: Opium Trade and the Dutch Community of Izmir, 1820-1949. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1998. Schmitt, Oliver Jens. “Levantins, européens et jeux d’identité,” In Smyrne, la ville oubliée? Mémoires d’un grand port ottoman, edited by Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis, 106-20. Paris: Éditions Autrement, 2006. Scott, James C. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977.

 243    

Short, John Rennier, et al., “From World Cities to Gateway Cities: Extending the Boundaries of Globalization Theory.” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 4, no. 3 (2000): 317-40. Simpson, James. Creating Wine: The Emergence of a World Industry, 1840-1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Sims, Eleanor. “Trade and Travel: Markets and Caravanserais.” In Architecture of the Islamic World, edited by George Michell, 80-111. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984. Şimşir, Nahide. “1845 İzmir Yangını.” In XIII. Türk Tarih Kongresi Bildirileri, 25577. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2002. Sjøholt, Peter. “Christaller Revisited: Reconsidering Christaller’s Analysis of Services and Central Places.” Service Industries Journal 21, no. 4 (October 2001): 198200. Sluglett, Peter. “Introduction.” In The Urban Social History of the Middle East, 17501950, edited by Peter Sluglett, 1-42. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Smyrnelis, Marie-Carmen. “Coexistence et réseaux de relations à Smyrne aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles.” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 67 (December 2003): 111-23. ----------. “Gli italiani a Smirne nei secoli XVIII e XIX.” Altreltalie 6, no. 12 (1994): 39-59. ----------. “Les Européens et leur implantation dans l’espace urbain de Smyrne (17501850).” In Les étrangers dans la ville. Minorités et espace urbain du bas Moyen Age à l’époque moderne, edited by Jacques Bottin and Donatella Calabi, 65-75. Paris: Editions de la MSH, 1999. ----------. “Smyrne au XIXème siècle. Organisation et utilisation de l’espace urbain,” In Actes du IIe Colloque International - Association des Etudes Néohelléniques, 371-87. Athens: Association des etudes néohelléniques, 2000. Taafle, Edward J. “Transport Expansion in Underdeveloped Countries.” Geographical Review 53 (1963): 502-29. Tabak, Faruk. The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550-1870. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008. Tansuğ, Feryal. “Communal Relations in Izmir/Smyrna, 1826-1864: As Seen through the Prism of Greek-Turkish Relations.” Toronto: University of Toronto Ph.D. Diss., 2008. Taylor, Peter J. World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis. London: Routledge, 2004. Tekeli, İlhan and Selim İlkin. “The Public Works Program and the Development of Technology in the Ottoman Empire in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.” Turcica 28 (1996): 195-235. Tengirşenk, Yusuf Kemal. “Tanzimat Dönemi’nde Osmanlı Devleti’nin Harici Ticari Siyaseti.” In Tanzimat I, Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1940.

 244    

Tepekaya, Muzaffer. “19. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Kırım ve Kafkasya’dan Göç Hareketleri ve Saruhan (Manisa) Sancağı’na Göçler.” Türk Dünyası İncelemeleri Dergisi 6, no. 2 (2006): 463-80. Terzi, Arzu. “Güzelhisar-ı Aydın: Portrait of a Western Anatolian Town.” In The Ottoman State and Societies in Change: A Study of the Nineteenth Century Temettuat Registers, edited by Hayashi Kayako and Mahir Aydın, 141-71. London: Kegan Paul, 2004. Terzibaşoğlu, Yücel. “Eleni Hatun’un Zeytin Bahçeleri: 19. Yüzyılda Anadolu’da Mülkiyet Hakları Nasıl İnşa Edildi?.” Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar 4 (Fall 2006): 121-47. ----------. “Land Disputes and Ethno-Politics: Northwestern Anatolia, 1877-1912.” In Ethno-Nationality, Property Rights in Land and Territorial Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, edited by Stanley Engermann and Jacob Metzer, 15380. London: Routledge, 2004. ----------. “Landlords, Nomads and Refugees: Struggles over Land and Population Movements in North-western Anatolia, 1877-1914.” London: University of London Ph.D. Diss, 2003. ----------. “Landlords, Refugees, and Nomads: Struggles for Land around LateNineteenth-Century Ayvalık.” New Perspectives on Turkey 24 (Spring 2004): 51-82. Themopoulou, Emilia. “The Urbanisation of an Asia Minor City. The Example of Smyrna.” In Smyrnē: hē mētropolē tou mikrasiatikou Hellēnismou = Smyrna: Metropolis of the Asia Minor Greeks. edited by Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 41-91. Athens: Ephesos, 2002. Thobie, Jacques. Intérêts et impérialisme français dans l’Empire ottoman (18951914). Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1977. Todd, Daniel. Industrial Dislocation: The Case of Global Shipbuilding. London: Routledge, 1991. Toksöz, Meltem. “Bir Coğrafya, Bir Ürün, Bir Bölge: 19. Yüzyılda Çukurova.” Kebikeç 21 (Spring 2006): 97-110. ----------. “Ottoman Mersin: The Making of an Eastern Mediterranean Port-town.” New Perspectives on Turkey 31 (Fall 2004): 71-90. ----------. Nomads, Migrants and Cotton in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Making of the Adana-Mersin Region, 1850-1908. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Tozduman, Arzu. “Aydın Güzelhisarı’nın Sosyal ve İktisadi Durumu.” Istanbul: Istanbul University M.A. Thesis, 1992. Tuncel, Mehmet. “Osmanlı Mimarisinde Bedestenler.” Ankara: Ankara University Ph.D. Diss., 1980. Turgay, Nizamettin. Türk Ziraat Tarihine Bir Bakış. Istanbul, 1938. Turgay, Üner. “Circassian Emigration into the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1878.” In Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, edited by Wael B. Hallaq and Donald P. Little, 193-217. Leiden: Brill, 1991.

 245    

Ülker, Necmi. “1797 Olayı ve İzmir’in Yakılması.” Ege Üniversitesi Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 2 (1984): 117-58. ----------. “Batılı Gözlemcilere Göre XVII. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında İzmir Şehri ve Ticari Sorunları.” Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi 12 (1982): 317-54. ----------. “The Emergence of Izmir as a Mediterranean Commercial Center for the French and English Interests 1688-1740.” International Journal of Turkish Studies 4, no. 1 (Summer 1987): 1-37. ----------. “The Role and Importance of Izmir on The Silk Trade, 17th and 18th Centuries.” In Unesco İpek Yolları Deniz Araştırma Gezisi Konferansları, 93111. Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1993. ----------. “XVII.Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında İzmir'deki İngiliz Tüccarlarına Dair Ticarî Problemlerle İlgili Belgeler.” Belgeler 14, no. 18 (1989-92): 261-320. ----------. XVII. ve XVIII. Yüzyıllarda İzmir Şehri Tarihi. Izmir: Akademi Kitabevi, 1994. Uluçay, Çağ atay. Manisa Tarihi. Istanbul: Resimli Ay Matbaası, 1939. Ünal, Muhittin. Çerkeslerin Sürgünü. Ankara: Kafder Yayınları, 2001. Uzuntepe, Gülçin. “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda İlk Demiryolu: İzmir-Aydın-Kasaba (Turgutlu) (1856-1897).” Eskişehir: Anadolu University M.A Thesis, 2000. Van Cleef, Eugene. “East Baltic Ports and Boundaries with Special Reference to Konigsberg.” Geographical Review 35, no. 2 (April 1945): 157-72. Varlık, Nükhet. “Conquest, Urbanization, and Plague Networks in the Ottoman Empire, 1453-1600.” In The Ottoman World, edited by Christine Woodhead, 251-63. London: Routledge, 2011. Vigarié, André. Les grands ports de commerce de la Seine au Rhin: Leur évolution devant l'industrialisation des arrière-pays. Paris: SABRI, 1964. Wallerstein, Immanuel and Faruk Tabak, “The Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean, and the European World-Economy, c. 1560-1800.” In The Great OttomanTurkish Civilization, edited by Kemal Çiçek, 120-27. Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000. Wallerstein, Immanuel, Hale Decdeli, and Reşat Kasaba. “The Incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the World-Economy.” In The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, edited by Huri İslamoğlu-İnan, 88-100. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System. 3 vols. New York: Academic Press, 1974-1989. ----------. “The Ottoman Empire and the Capitalist World-Economy: Some Questions for Research.” Review II, no. 3 (Winter 1979): 389-90. ----------. The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Wang, James J. “Hong Kong: An Upgraded Gateway for China Trade.” In Gateways to Globalisation: Asia’s International Trading and Finance Centres, edited by François Gipouloux, 117-29. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2011.  246    

Weigend, Guido G. “Some Elements in the Study of Port Geography.” Geographical Review 48, no. 2 (April 1958): 185-200. ----------. “The Problem of Hinterland and Foreland as Illustrated by the Port of Hamburg.” Economic Geography 32 (1956): 1-16. Weinand, H. C. “A Spatio-Temporal Model of Economic Development.” Australian Geographical Studies 10 (1972): 95-100. Weiner, Douglas R. “A Death-Defying Attempt to Articulate a Coherent Definition of Environmental History.” Environmental History 10, no. 3 (July 2005): 404-20. White, Richard. “American Environmental History: The Development of a New Historical Field.” Pacific Historical Review 54 (August 1985): 297-335. White, Sam, “The Nature of Plague in Late Eighteenth-Century Egypt.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008): 249–75. ----------. The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Williams, David M. “Trading Links: Patterns of Information and Communication: The Steamship and the Modernization of the East-West Commerce.” In East Meets West. Banking, Commerce, and Investment in the Ottoman Empire, edited by Philip L. Cotrell, Monika Pohle, and Iain L. Fraser, 25-40. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008. Winterbottom. Daniel M., Wood in the Landscape: A Practical Guide to Specification and Design. New York: John Wiley, 2000. Wirth, Eugen. “Zum Problem des Bazaars.” Der Islam 52 (1974): 203-60. Wood, Alfred C. A History of the Levant Company. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1935. Worster, Donald. “Doing Environmental History.” In The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, edited by Donald Worster, 289-307. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ----------. “History as Natural History: An Essay on Theory and Method.” Pacific Historical Review 53, no. 1 (1984): 1-19. ----------. “Transformations of the Earth: Toward an Agroecological Perspective in History.” Journal of American History 76 (March 1990): 1087-1106. Yapucu, Olcay Pullukçuoğlu. “XIX. Yüzyılda Batı Anadolu İpekçiliği.” In Halil İnalcık Armağanı. 2 vols., edited by Taşkın Takış, 117-35. Ankara: Doğu Batı Yayınları, 2011. ----------. Modernleşme Sürecinde Bir Sancak: Aydın. Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2007. Yerasimos, Stefanos. “Quelques éléments sur l’ingénieur Luigi Storari.” In Architettura e architetti italiani ad Istanbul tra il XIX e il XX secolo, 117-23 (Istanbul: Istituto italiano di cultura, 1995. Yıldırmak, Gülay Webb. XVIII. Yüzyılda Osmanlı-İngiliz Tiftik Ticareti. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2011. Yılmaz, Serap and Léon Kontente. Présence française à Smyrne du XVIIe au XIXe siècle. Montigny-le-Bretonneux: Yvelinédition, 2012.  247    

Zandi-Sayek, Sibel. Ottoman Izmir. The Rise of a Cosmopolitan Port, 1840-1880. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

 248