Why and how did Oriental carpets become one of the most important export sectors– and the one with the largest number of women employees– in the late Ottoman Empire? This paper examines the development of that sector and the encroachment of global capitalism into the late Ottoman Empire following the violence against Armenians in the 1890s and in 1909. It argues that Armenian women and children in the post-violence Armenian communities were incorporated into the global market as a vulnerable, organizationally weak and cost-efficient workforce for the flourishing oriental carpet sector. The paper thus approaches post-violence societies as new environments into which capitalism’s borders expanded where exploited cheap labor was exploited as part of their reconstruction. This expansion came in the form of “disaster capitalism” or “predatory capitalism” in those regions where unregulated markets and exploitation of human and material resources were coupled with a financially and economically weak state, and it created both the material institutions and the discourses for acceptance of the private sector’s role in the recovery of a post-disaster society. As the market began to replace the communal bonds which had been destroyed by the violence, Armenian women’s and children’s exploitation in the form of low wages and long work-hours began to be redeemed as culturally acceptable– and for some it was, in any case, a necessity, as the only means to alleviate their wretched condition and to serve the community. By examining the Armenian press of the period, aid committees’ reports and the documents of carpet firms, the paper will focus on the creation of what David Harvey called “structured coherence” in the violence-stricken Armenian regions where both the material institutions of and the discourses about the market bolstered their community and strove for its solidarity. This paper aims to examine, on the one hand, the history of the most vibrant economic sector of the late Ottoman Empire within the developing field of global capitalism and, on the other hand, will question the dominant narratives of social change in the Middle East by highlighting the role of various non-state and transnational actors.