o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

ALIYE F. MATARACI
religious identity, absent in the original data, is added to test its significance for the
three brothers’ decisions as to whom to trade with 6 . As far as the Manchester
branch is concerned, the correspondence between İlyas, the middle brother in Istanbul,
and Cemil, the younger brother in Manchester, and secondary literature on
Manchester are utilized as the major sources of information.
A snapshot of the provincial branch of the Mataracızâde network
In order to provide a snapshot of the provincial branch, all 63 correspondents located
in various provinces are analyzed according to their business type (the affiliation
of the commercial parties), ethno-religious characteristics and locations 7 . The
three main categories explained above, namely individual merchants, family businesses
and partnerships are used to analyze the make-up of the businesses in the
provincial network. This is followed by the ethno-religious profile, subdivided into
the categories of Armenian, Christian-Arab, Greek, Jewish and Muslim. In terms of
the geographical distribution of correspondents, the destination of letters, at the
minimal level of either a district or a city, is considered as their place of residence.
Business type
Among the 63 collaborators based in the provinces, only three were Mataracızâde
family members, the total number of family members in the whole network being
five. These numbers show that the network did not evolve around kinship. On the
contrary, it mostly consisted of third parties, most of whom were individual merchants
(see Figure 1) 8 . Hence, the network consisting of the commercial letter correspondents
appears as individual merchant dominated, rather than concentrated on
family businesses, which is generally taken to be the dominant model for commercial
networks. This specific case therefore challenges the dominant assumption in
current literature on commercial networks about the family-concentrated character
of commercial houses regardless of their ethno-religious characteristics 9 .
6 The ethno-religious categories introduced into the data are Armenian (A), Greek (G),
Jewish (J), Muslim (M), Christian Arab (CA), Foreigner (F) and Levantine (L). As these categories
are attributed according to educated guesses based on names, there is always room for
mistakes. The Foreigner and Levantine categories in particular are highly problematic as it is
hard to determine which names fall into which category. Nevertheless, we expect the mistakes
to cancel out in high numbers.
7 The only institution within the provincial data, Adapazarı Muslim Commercial Bank, is
excluded for standardization of data.
8 Though they appear as individual merchants within the available commercial collection,
they may turn out to be family businesses with only one member mentioned in the correspondence.
9 Gelina Harlaftis, 'Mediterranean Entrepreneurial Diaspora Networks During the Long
Nineteenth Century', in Competing Networks: Greek and Other Commercial Houses (University of
~ 428 ~