Working in a Fez Factory in Istanbul in the Late Nineteenth Century: Division of Labour and Networks of Migration Formed along Ethno-Religious Lines

Abstract

In terms of production volume, most Ottoman state factories cannot be regarded as success stories, yet the labour relations-they initiated, engendered, and supervised were important for the emergence of factory about in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish republic. One of those state factories was the Imperial Fez Factory, where, throughout the nineteenth century, approximately 500 workers were employed, making it the second highest concentration of industrial workers in the empire after the Imperial Arsenal. Very recently, a limited number of wage ledgers for the fez factory became available for research. Those ledgers provide unprecedented information not only on remuneration but also on the production process and labour-control practices in the fez factory. Those ledgers enable us, for the first time, to formulate research questions within the framework of a broad labour, history, in particular for the Ottoman factory workforce in the late nineteenth century. This article examines the effects of the ethno-religious characteristics and gender of Ottoman factory labourers on employment practices and wage-earning at the fez factory.