Suchergebnisse

This short contribution is a slightly edited version of the Dean's Distinguished Lecture that Donald Quataert gave at Binghamton University on 5 November 2010—his last public lecture before his death in February 2011. Quataert was a tireless advocate of the method of "history from below," which reflects the perspectives of ordinary working men and women in the past. He saw it as a necessary corrective to much of the state-centered historiography in the field of Ottoman history. It was in this vein, too, that he trained his graduate students at Binghamton University. Quataert presented several different versions of this talk earlier at Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of Washington, and the University of Toronto. A number of footnotes and a select bibliography have been added, which may prove useful for future scholarly endeavors.

As explained by one of its founders, subaltern studies seeks to counteract histories written by elites, about elites, and for elites that ignore the majority of society. Through this examination, the urban poor, workers, and peasants of India, the original focus of attention, are agents in the formation of their subaltern consciousness: the "agency of change is located in the insurgent or the 'subaltern.'"

This article surveys the evolution of labor history writing as an increasingly vibrant subfield of Ottoman history. It addresses labor historians outside of Ottoman history and for their benefit traces why and how workers almost completely were left out of Ottoman historical writing until c. 1970. Thereafter, Ottoman historians have more frequently discussed workers and their histories. At first focusing on organized workers and their relations with the state, these writings then shifted to labor in action. Thus, Ottoman labor history writing paralleled, in many respects, that of other fields of history. More recently, attention has been given to non-guild, non-union labor—including women and children—and its activities in the workplace.

In 1826, Sultan Mahmud II orchestrated the slaughter of 6,000–7,000 janissaries and, in order to incinerate any janissary remnants that had taken refuge there, burned the Belgrade Forest outside Istanbul. During his reign (1808–39), the sultan attacked many of the other bases of the ancien régime, such as thetimarsystem, the lifetime tax farms, and the political autonomy of provincial notables. He also centralized the pious foundations, brought them under a special ministry, and expropriated their revenues. Such stories of Sultan Mahmud's dramatic and violent policies, as well as their 18th-century origins and their 19th-century legacies, are familiar ones in Ottoman and Middle Eastern history. It is a commonplace that Sultan Mahmud aimed to dismantle the power of the military and religious classes in favor of a new bureaucracy of administrators and scribes. And it is also known that his efforts had a major impact on the subsequent evolution of the Tanzimat reform programs during the later 19th century.