arsenal of Ottoman modernity: workers, industry, and the state in late Ottoman Istanbul.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20289448

This dissertation analyzes the connections between modern-state formation, industrial capitalism, and class formation in the late Ottoman Empire, focusing on the Imperial Arsenal of the Ottoman navy, the largest military-industrial site in Ottoman Istanbul. Based mostly on research in the Ottoman and British archives, it argues that capitalist class formation characterized the history of Ottoman modernity in the long nineteenth century. I begin with an analysis of how domestic and global processes pushed the Ottoman government to reorganize the production process in the Imperial Arsenal. Attempts to bring labor under industrial discipline, first by restructuring the traditional sources of labor, and then by militarizing the entire labor force through the employment of naval conscripts, faced persistent resistance by both Muslim and Christian subjects of the Empire, which eventually curtailed these reforms. I then analyze the role of the Industrial Revolution and the increasing political and economic connections with Britain in the transformation of the Imperial Arsenal, through technology and labor transfer. Technological transformation, under the supervision of British engineers, brought the migration of large numbers of European workers, mostly consisting of British mechanics, to the Arsenal in the mid-nineteenth century. I discuss how the experiences of migrant workers and their contentious relations with the Ottoman government integrated them into the making of capitalist class relations in this period. In addition, I demonstrate how resistance against militarization and contentious relations between civilian workers and the Ottoman state pushed the latter to launch vocational schools in the Arsenal with the aim of creating an industrial working class out of the poor children in Istanbul, who would replace first foreign, then all civilian workers. In the final chapter, I discuss how the Arsenal became a modern factory, committed to (re)produce not only the capitalist relations of production but also state-society relations in line with the modernist ideals of the state elites to convert Ottoman subjects to industrial citizens in the Tanzimat Era.