Emre Can Daglioglu: Archival Research in Lille and Berlin

“Silk-made Capitalism” simply explores how capitalism had come into existence in the late Ottoman Empire by focusing on sericulture mainly rebuilt by a European creditors-led institution, the Public Debt Administration. The Public Debt Administration was granted in 1881 collecting tax revenues of certain imperial monopolies including silk to repay the huge defaulted foreign debts of the empire. Moreover, the Administration’s role was not limited to taking away the lion’s share of imperial income. The PDA had distributed incentives, provided low-end credits, supervised the quality of goods, purchased crops, and trained sericulturists between 1883 and 1914. In other words, with five thousand officers -much more than the Finance Ministry- in its all these networks it became the backbone of the imperial finance and capitalism in the Ottoman Empire.

My research dives into how the alliances and networks formed against or by the PDA around silk production reconfigured and reshaped capitalism in the Ottoman Empire Conceptually, diverging from earlier works dealing with this question, I recast capitalism as a socially constructed process by inextricably intertwined local, global, and ecological actors. In doing so, this project will bring new capitalism studies that foregrounds material entanglements, local networks, and nonhuman agencies into the economic history of the Ottoman Empire. This research account for the participation of disparate ethno-religious, social and economic groups such as silk workers, urban elites, PDA employees, tax farmers, silkworm eggs smugglers, sericulture experts, and local state officials in restructuring and reconstructing Ottoman capitalism. Furthermore, a specific focus on ecological and social circuits of silk will open up a window into how capitalism re-created the dynamics of class relations, commodification of textile and labor, and environmental inequalities in the late Ottoman Empire.

This methodology helps go beyond framing Ottoman modernization as the imposed fate of peripheral state of the world economy or a replicable development phase already superseded in the West. Instead, investigating the global through specific local connections, this research aims to pave the way for a more sophisticated analysis of agency in financial, socio-political, and environmental change at the edge of the imperial decline.

For this research, the Europe Center at Stanford University has supported my initial visit in the Archives du Monde du Travail (Labor World Archives) in Lille, France and the German State Archives in Berlin, Germany. The annual employment reports and statistics of the PDA housed in Lille help me understand the social aspects of the Administration and its presence as a major employer of Ottoman and foreign subjects. It was intriguing to see that the overwhelming majority of these employees were Muslims who did account for 92-94 percent of all PDA employees. In contrast to the general assumption of the Ottoman historiography which pictures non-Muslim Ottoman subjects as flourished thanks to the growing European impact on the Ottoman finance, the PDA provided a lucrative and secure opportunity for economic mobilization to Muslims by creating a well-paid bury the eaucracy with good working conditions. Thus, I can challenge the existed stereotypical picture by positing that Muslim technocrats and bureaucrats also had a stake in the continuation of the foreign financial control represented by the PDA.

In Berlin, I also found a great deal of reports and correspondences written by consuls in Bursa and Aleppo and state officials in Berlin, dealing with imperial silk production from the perspective of gender, labor, and science and technology while making direct reference to the policies of the PDA. Although many scholars have previously had access to these reports, almost no ink has been spilled in the silk economy on the basis of these collections. However, these sources will support my argument in the dissertation that Ottoman capitalism after the implementation of the PDA was built through interactions of traditional and emerging networks.

Lastly, I am very grateful to the Europe Center at Stanford University for helping to finance this research. In addition, I believe that this sponsorship added to the outreach of the European Center a platform addressing the importance of thinking about a global history that bridges various human and non-human actors.