 Migration
and urban institutions in the late Ottoman Reform Period
Lafi, Nora
Riedler, Florian
Fuhrmann, Malte
Freitag, Ulrike
The project investigates the changes which Ottoman cities underwent
in the 19th and early 20th centuries. During this period of reform
new forms of urbanity emerged in these cities. Urban institutions
evolved in a process which will be reconstructed critically and
will take into account the merger of older and new types of government
that set the framework for the new urbanity. At the same time,
social processes, notably migration, prompted change which in
itself influenced the structure and social life in Ottoman cities.
Through linking the institutional and the migratory perspective
and highlighting their interconnectedness, we hope to gain new
insight into the processes of modernisation in cities belonging
to the Ottoman Empire and its successor states. The common focus
of our interest is the influence of translocal flows of people
and ideas which furthered these processes. Thus, we like to look
at late Ottoman urbanity from a perspective which transcends the
common opposition of exogenous and endogenous modernisation.
sub-project 1
Urban government in the Ottoman Empire
Dr. Nora Lafi
The project at deals with the structures of urban government
in the Ottoman Maghreb and Middle East during the reform period,
and focuses in particular on the relationship of guilds to urban
governance from Old Regime to modernity. A more comprehensive
knowledge of social structures, unsatisfactorily summarized by
the term pre-modern, is crucial to the understanding of reforms
and modernity. As guilds and confessional communities were frequently
the basis of urban government structures in the merchant cities
of the Ottoman Empire, they were a key point in the implementation
of reforms, not unlike the social milieu whose interests they
reflected. The aim of this study is to consider the work of Ottoman
and local urban reformers, the inclusion of traditional local
elites in the new municipal and Ottoman imperial governance, and
the reform of the guild system and the work-trade market in relation
to urban social control (from Old Regime-like guilds to modernised
institutions with work and trade regulations). A further aim is
to trace the evolution of Old Regime institutions, although formally
dismantled, up to the period of modernization. From a translocal
point of view, it is important to study the trajectories of such
ideas and reforms to ensure that Ottoman urban reform is not simply
regarded as imported from Europe. Under the Ottoman Empire, local
to local and local to central circulations were probably just
as important as those from the centre to the local, particularly
in the case of urban reforms. The reform context during the period
of urban growth at the end of the Ottoman Empire was translocal.
Reformers were faced with the problem of ruling a society whose
components were changing as a result of migration. The study of
urban government during the reform period is essential to exploring
the governance of a society shaped by migration. Migration challenged
urban organisation at the precise moment of its reform, i.e.,
guilds for control of the labour market and confessional communities
for wider social control.
Related seminar at the ZMO
sub-project 2
Dr. Florian
Riedler
"Where all the streets are paved with gold…"
Seasonal workers from Anatolia in late Ottoman Istanbul.
Seasonal work migrants from different geographical, ethnic or
religious backgrounds represented a big group among the inhabitants
of the larger Ottoman cities. At the same time they played a crucial
role in the day to day economic life of these cities being employed
mainly as unqualified labour. Already before the nineteenth century
there were well established systems of work migration in place
that brought young men (bekar) from the rural provinces of the
empire to the cities. It was their aim to earn as much cash as
possible before returning to their families at the end of a work
cycle that could last for several years.
The project examines the changes that this traditional social
institution of work migration underwent from the nineteenth century
onwards. A basic focus of interest lies on the living and working
conditions of the labour migrants in the city. In accordance with
the overarching research questions the project is especially interested
in the migrants' interaction with the urban administration and
their contribution to the modernisation of Ottoman cities and
the new forms of urbanity developing in the nineteenth century.
sub-project 3
Dr. Malte
Fuhrmann
European and Balkan Working Migrants in the
late Ottoman Port Cities
The sub-project aims to analyze on the one hand the attempts
by consulates and trade representatives to influence some of the
working migrants in order to increase their respective states’
influence in the late Ottoman port cities. The effects of such
demands by the ‘national’ representatives on the translocal
life-forms of the ‘European’ working migrants as well
as of Slavonic-speaking working migrants of Central Balkan origin
and on late Ottoman maritime urbanity will be discussed. On the
other hand, the migrants’ agency and views will be reconstructed
as part of a ‘societal field of force’ – i.e.
changes in their views of themselves and the world around them,
sociabilities within and beyond their social sub-group, will be
analyzed in the context of persistence, ‘Eigen-Sinn’
(obstinacy/self-will, Lüdtke 1993), and accommodation. Their
constructive and/or destructive effects on the urban sphere will
be highlighted. For this, the documents of the German and Austro-Hungarian
consulates in Salonica and Smyrna as well as of the Bulgarian
representative in Salonica will be studied according to Arlette
Frage’s methodology, aiming to pinpoint the consulates’
strategies towards the working migrants as well as articulations
by the migrants themselves.
sub project 4
Migration and the constitution of urbanity in Jeddah in the
19th century
Prof. Dr.
Ulrike Freitag
The city of Jeddah in the Hijaz was and is the first port of
call for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. During the 19th century, it
also served as the major economic centre of the region and, periodically,
as seat of the Ottoman governor. These functions attracted migrants
who settled in Jeddah.
The project investigates the history of migration, and the integration
of the migrants into the urban fabric during a period of rapid
change. The rapid expansion of transport and trade in the wake
of the introduction of steamshipping, the opening of the Suez-Canal
and European expansion as well as the Ottoman reforms are only
some of the most significant changes. The project aims to investigate
the mechanisms through which migrants from Yemen, Iran, India
and the Horn of Africa became part of the city, and the conflicts
caused by migration. Can Jeddah be considered a model of cosmopolitanism?
Related seminar at the ZMO
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