You are kindly invited to the seminar entitled as “The Transimperial Labor Market in Istanbul during the Late Nineteenth Century” organized by the Department of History.
Date: 06 November 2025, Thursday
Time: 16.30
Avenue: A-130 FEASS Seminar Room
Title: The Transimperial Labor Market in Istanbul during the Late Nineteenth Century
Speaker: Yaşar Tolga Cora, Boğaziçi University,
Abstract:
In September 1882, a ship heading towards Egypt was stopped by the Ottoman authorities. It was carrying over one hundred Armenian and Greek workers from the Ottoman provinces and Constantinople; the workers had been recruited as unskilled workers for the occupying British army in Egypt. The incident turned into a scandal in the Ottoman capital when the news that the subjects of the Sultan were willing to work for a foreign army spread among the inhabitants of the city. The reaction of the Ottoman security officials was to run a thorough investigation in various neighborhoods which revealed the organization of a transimperial labor market centered in the imperial capital. The presentation will focus on this labor market in the late nineteenth century by highlighting the role of actors, namely, consuls, merchants and technical experts and the Ottoman imperial reaction to the running of the such labor markets in its capital.
Bio:
Yaşar Tolga Cora is Associate Professor at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He has published on the social and cultural history of the Armenian communities in the late Ottoman Empire. His works have appeared in various journals including the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient and the International Review of Social History. He is co-editor of the volume “The Ottoman East: Societies, Identities and Politics” (2016) and the forthcoming volume “Occupied Istanbul: Urban Politics, Culture and Society 1918-1923”. Dr. Cora also has co-edited and published two memoirs “In Front of the Eyes of the World: The Memoirs of Setrak Timourian” (2023) and “Memoirs of Mardiros Agha Gertmenian of Hadjin” (2025).