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A study of migration, mobility control and state power in the late Ottoman EmpireThis book tells the story of Armenian migration to North America in the late Ottoman period, and Istanbul's efforts to prevent it. It shows how, just as in the present, migrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were forced to travel through clandestine smuggling networks, frustrating the enforcement of the ban on migration. Further, migrants who attempted to return home from sojourns in North America risked debarment at the border and deportation, while the return of migrants who had naturalized as US citizens generated friction between the United States and Ottoman governments. The author sheds light on the relationship between the imperial state and its Armenian populations in the decades leading up to the Armenian genocide. He also places the Ottoman Empire squarely in the middle of global debates on migration, border control and restriction in this period, adding to our understanding of the global historical origins of contemporary immigration politics and other issues of relevance today in the Middle East region, such borders and frontiers, migrants and refugees, and ethno-religious minorities. Key FeaturesAn in-depth study of illicit migration in a non-Western contextSheds light on the phenomenon of migrant smuggling from a historical perspectiveDemonstrates the effects of different regimes of mobility control on the migration processExamines the limits of citizenship and nationality in the context of global migrationDemonstrates the surprising convergence of anti-migrant politics and policies in both the Ottoman Empire and United States at the turn of the twentieth century

Gutman's article examines the attempts by the Ottoman state under Sultan Abdulhamid II to prevent large-scale Armenian migration to North America. It reveals how these efforts were hampered in practice by contradictions inherent within the state's attempts to control and surveil the mobility of its subjects, internecine feuding within its provincial bureaucracy, and numerous and often conflicting social and political dynamics on the ground. This article contributes to our understanding of issues of state making, social control, and labor discipline in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire and the various social forces that both shaped and resisted these processes. What emerges is a nuanced view of the post-Tanzimat Ottoman state's ability to exercise its will on the ground. Finally, it provides crucial and much needed insight into the relationship between the central Ottoman state and its Armenian population in the years prior to the 1915 Armenian genocide.

AbstractThis article is based on a case file examining the allegedly corrupt behavior of the district governor (kaymakam) of Ereğli, located in the Black Sea coal district of the Ottoman Empire, before the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. It paints a vivid picture of the cronyism, greed, and demands for justice that abound in the testimonies and petitions of a diverse array of local actors that were included in the case file. These documents provide the opportunity to shed light on, among other things, the growing nexus between state power and capital in the late Ottoman Empire within a little-studied peripheral context. As the article shows, prospects of control over the region's burgeoning coal economy led to abuses among officials at various levels of the local and imperial bureaucracy, the impacts of which were felt (to varying degrees) by a wide cross-section of Ereğli society. The behavior of the district governor and his allies, along with the final decision made in the case, reveals much about power, wealth, and justice in the final years of the Abdülhamit regime.