o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

THE COMPLEX NATURE OF AN OTTOMAN COMMERCIAL NETWORK
intended to take the necessary steps for the creation of a national Turkish bourgeoisie.
The ideological framework of the National Economy movement put forward two major
political and economic agendas: first, encouraging Muslim Turkish subjects to engage
in business, and second, boycotting the businesses of non-Muslim subjects. The
general assumption based on this narrative would be that, overall, the number of
Muslim commercial subjects after 1908 increased. The analysis below will test this argument
for commission agents in Istanbul at the turn of the century.
Foreigners, who constituted 54% of the commission agents in Istanbul in 1894,
were replaced as the dominant category by Armenians (36%) in 1904, and then by
Greeks (31%) in 1914 (see Appendix IV). 1904 data shows the addition of the Muslim
category (absent from the 1894 data) with a share of 6%, and the overall increase
in the share of Armenians (from 17% to 36%), Greeks (from 15% to 22%)
and Jews (from 12% to 16%) with a compensating decrease in the share of foreigners
from 54% to 18% (see Appendix IV, Figure 6). In a Greek-dominated population
of commission agents (31%), with foreigners in second place (24%) in 1914,
Muslims increased their share up to 9% (see Figure 7). The 3% increase in Muslim
share between 1904 and 1914 not only fails to be representative of the overall increase
in the number of commission agents but also renders commission agency ineligible
as an area of commercial specialization for the argued ‘boom’ in Muslim entrepreneurship
after 1908. What is also significant in the 1914 distribution is the increase
in exemplary partnerships between different ethno-religious groups, such as
the partnership of a Greek and an Armenian or a Muslim and an Armenian. Although
these partnerships are very few in number, the ethno-religious variety
among the partners is worth noting (see Appendix IV, Figure 7).
The analysis of names listed in the category ‘textiles and manufactured goods’
indicates a fall in the total number of traders in this category between 1894 and
1909 (from 377 to 279), which was followed by a slight increase up to 313 in 1914.
This is partially covered by the increase in the number of Muslims (36) which had
remained at exactly the same number (21) between 1894 and 1909, once again failing
to meet the expected increase in the Muslim entrepreneurial population. Over
90% of the merchants dealing with textiles and manufactured goods were located in
Stamboul, the dominant ethno-religious category being Armenians followed by
Greeks in all decades (see Appendix V). Although Greeks appear as the most
prominent figures in the textile sector between 1880 and 1912 in Tanatar-Baruh’s
study of textile merchants in Istanbul 19 , this analysis points to significant Armenian
domination within a particular area of specialization directly related to the textile
sector between 1894 and 1914 and hence, another instance of Armenian domination
in the Ottoman cotton market, this time in its Istanbul branch, in addition to their
dominance in the provinces to which allusion has already been made.
19 Tanatar-Baruh, ‘At the Turn of the Century, Textile Dealers in an International Port
City, Istanbul'.
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