Ottoman Reform at Work: Class, Migration, and Coercion in the Imperial Arsenal

During the nineteenth century, Ottoman sultans and bureaucrats engaged in a series of reforms that dramatically transformed the Ottoman state and society. But what did these reforms mean for the working classes in the Empire? In this study, Akın Sefer focuses on a single naval worksite, The Imperial Arsenal on the Golden Horn in Istanbul, to explore how reform processes were entangled with global capitalism. The Arsenal was a nexus where the global transformations of capitalism and Ottoman reform policies converged with the traditional and modern processes of labor coercion and migration. Drawing on an in-depth exploration of archival sources, Sefer traces the complicated relations between the working classes and the Ottoman state within this worksite and the neighbourhoods around it in Istanbul. Engaging with a wide array of scholarship in Ottoman and global history, this study brings new perspectives and questions on Ottoman modernity, highlighting the agency of working classes in both Ottoman and global history.