The külhanbeys of late Ottoman Istanbul, most especially during the 1890s, are a well-established part of Turkish culture. References to them are found in popular histories, literature, and films from the CUP period to the present. They are described in various ways, but always as a more or less well-defined group of marginalized, homeless men who engage in criminal activities and are best known for their rowdy, disruptive behavior. They also have a distinctive style of dress. In this paper, however, I argue that there was no such group at the time they are commonly said to have flourished. They simply did not exist. The tales of the külhanbeys are an urban folklore, with only a very indirect basis in historical fact. Working from such primary sources as Ebüzziya Tevfik’s Yeni Osmanl?lar Tarihi and short pieces by memoirists Ahmed Rasim and Bal?khane Naz?r? Ali R?za Bey, I examine the common narratives about the külhanbeys, including those of their origins and ‘rooting out’ in 1846. In this narrative, there was a true organization of marginalized, homeless men who slept in the ashpits (külhan) of the hamams, and all the members of this organization were drafted into the army or pressed into factory work by order of the Ministry of War in 1846. I argue that even if such a group did exist in an earlier period (and it likely did), the destruction in 1846 must have been total. I then look at the cultural situation in 1890s Istanbul and examine what other groups (such as kabaday?s, tulumbac?s, and kopuks) might have been conflated with the earlier külhanbeys to create the modern folklore. I finish by asking why this confusion of names or conflation of identities might have taken place. The folklorization of the külhanbeys in post-Hamidian Turkish culture underscores the difficulty of studying marginalized groups. Not only are there rarely clear, extensive documentary records of them, but even in the popular culture they get misrepresented and their very identities changed and distorted.

In fulfillment of traditional guild regulations dating back to the Middle Ages, journeymen of the German lands had to take to the road and practice the professional skills acquired during apprenticeship elsewhere before being able to take the examination for master of their craft, which would allow them to settle and exercise their chosen profession. New means of transportation and the profound political changes and economic crises in central Europe in the nineteenth century put once unreachable destinations on the map for young journeymen after finishing their apprenticeships. A trove of hardly known ego documents, or life narratives, on nineteenth century Istanbul has been preserved in private archives or as print editions of often minuscule circulation numbers that were produced by small local publishers throughout the German-speaking world. Forming part of a genre of texts by the “sons and daughters“ of a particular town or region that were and continue to be published primarily as a contribution to local history writing (Heimatgeschichte), narrative accounts of far-away places such as the Ottoman capital had a special appeal to publishers and readers alike for their air of adventure and exoticism. By drawing on half a dozen virtually unknown printed diaries, letters, and other life narratives preserved in private archives in Istanbul and Germany, this contribution affords new insights into the daily life of nineteenth century Istanbul from the viewpoint of foreign short-term residents, some of whom would eventually opt to stay on as new immigrants to the Ottoman lands. While their special skills and training gave some of the Central European journeymen privileged access even to the exclusive realm of the Ottoman court household where they found employment, their accounts offer a fresh look on the social realities of Istanbul residents of different walks of life. Towards the end of the Ottoman Empire this caleidoscope was further enriched by the growing body of an international blue-collar workforce in the Ottoman capital, which the German-speaking journeymen’s life narratives illustrate.

After the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the ruling elite, known as the ‘Kemalists’, aimed not only to catch up with the Western civilization and surpass it, but also to demonstrate that the new Turkey was capable of surpassing the Ottoman Empire primarily in terms of the economic performance and national security. Even though the roughly 4000 km of the railway network within the new boundaries of Turkey was constructed under the late Ottoman Empire, the founding fathers of the republic were inclined to deny the legacy of their Ottoman predecessors. Instead, they underscored their own contribution and instrumentalized the railways which were perceived as a symbol of modernity, catalyst of the national economy and a conditio sine qua non of the national defense. Similarly, the academic literature, which focused on the role played by the foreign capital, presented the railway development in the late Ottoman period as a chaotic, disorderly and inefficient process. By doing so, the Ottoman Empire was mostly portrayed as a playground of the imperialist powers which competed for the concessions. However, the question whether this competition enabled the Ottoman statesmen to implement their own projects was rather overlooked. In this paper, I aim to find out to what extent the Ottoman statesmen were able to take advantage of the competition between the British, French and German railway companies and how they influenced their Kemalist successors. Furthermore, I assess the change and continuity over time by contrasting and comparing the economic, political and military considerations of the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic, which were ostensibly very different. Focusing on the construction of the Samsun-Sivas, Sivas-Erzurum, Ulukisla-Kayseri, Kayseri-Sivas, Sivas-Malatya and Malatya-Diyarbakir railroads, the paper shows that the ruling elite of the 1920s and 30s by far carried out the detailed project drawn up by the Ottoman Minister of Public Works, Hasan Fehmi Pasha in 1880. As a result, they have somewhat complemented the modernist ideals of the sultan, Abdulhamid II (1876-1909), who is seen as the mirror image of the former by both his proponents and opponents.

In his work on American railroad accidents, Mark Aldrich notes that “railroads were a transformative technology; they were a dangerous one as well.” In fact, this also seemed to be the case for the Ottoman Empire. In the second half of the 19th and early 20th century, people in different regions of the empire witnessed numerous railroad accidents that caused deaths, injuries, and property damages. A considerable number of these accidents involved trespassers walking or sleeping on the tracks. Here are two examples. On 7 May 1888, a train headed from Buca to Izmir ran over and killed an old man named Black Ibrahim. While reconstructing how the accident occurred, witnesses stated that the old man climbed out of a ditch near a switch and suddenly got onto the tracks a few meters away from the train. About twenty years later, in July 1908, an elderly woman was struck and injured by an Oriental Railway Company train in Istanbul, while she was trying to cross the tracks. This paper deals with two inter-related questions about this type of accidents. First, it examines how people from different segments of Ottoman society responded to them. Drawing mainly on documents in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive in Istanbul and newspaper reports, it shows that the death or injury of a trespasser at times sparked violent protests. Government officials at various times reported that trains involved in such accidents were stoned by crowds of angry protesters. The paper also demonstrates that besides these spontaneous protests, people both in urban and rural areas also undertook proactive efforts to improve railroad safety. For example, they had filed petitions asking the government and railway companies to construct fences at certain locations along railroad lines and to increase the number of watchmen. Second, the paper investigates how the Ottoman government and railway companies approached the issue of railroad safety and responded to the above-mentioned protests and petitions. Thus, it aims to shed some light on the negotiations that ensued between societal actors and agents of the government and railway companies over railroad safety and on the outcomes of these negotiations. While doing this, it seeks to situate the Ottoman Empire in a broader context by highlighting and explaining similarities and differences between the empire and its counterparts in Asia, Europe, and North America in dealing with the dangers of a new transportation technology.