The story of innovation during the Ottomans’ “longest century” (the 19th century) is traditionally written according to the trajectories of West to East and center to periphery: all new things came from Western Europe initially, and the Ottoman court, its bureaucrats, and through them the imperial capital Istanbul were at the forefront of bringing this change about. The very word that has become eponymous with this period in historiography, Tanzimat (reorderings), reveals the historians’ preoccupation with state attempts at directing change. Due to our present-day experiences with globalization and the development towards multi-source-based research, we can now more readily question this center to periphery approach. The paper does not wish to revert to the theory prominent in 1980s historiography that a monocentric world economy was the sole driving force for social change in the Ottoman Empire. While global economic trends were doubtlessly important, human agency, often on a low level and without noticeable direction, was vital in bringing about the developments that proved to be of lasting impact. Based on my own research on alcohol and entertainment institutions, but also drawing on examples from research on economic, administrative, and urban history, I wish to show that Izmir was in many ways more of a trendsetter for change in the Northern half of the Ottoman Empire than the capital. Being strongly exposed already from the mid-19th century onwards to international commercial exchange and West and Central European trends in fashion, lifestyle, and consumption, Izmir adapted to these without much fuss, whereas Istanbul produced more spectacular signs of its state-driven modernization. These failed however to make a socially broad impact. The paper will bring together different kinds of sources, such as memoirs, Public Debt Administration statistics, consular court and administrative files, Ottoman police reports etc., as only a combination of sources enables us to identify the diverse sectors of life in which Izmir served as a trendsetter. There are indicators though that Izmir was losing its avantgarde position slowly to other centers towards the beginning of the 20th century.

Drawing on a large body of previously unexplored Ladino archival material, this paper will examine the changing contours of Jewish communal autonomy in Izmir during the late Ottoman period. By reference to a multitude of communal sources such as minute books, correspondence, and taxation records, the paper will demonstrate how Jewish leaders in Izmir sought to reconfigure long-standing fixtures of traditional Jewish self-governance, such as the chief rabbinate, lay communal council, and mechanisms of internal taxation, to meet the perceived demands of "modernity." The paper will thus reconstruct how the centralizing and rationalizing impulses of the Tanzimat reverberated within Izmir’s Jewish community, as leaders sought to standardize processes embedded in the contentious issue of rabbinic succession, elaborate new representative bodies such as a meclis umumi, or general assembly, and abandon destabilizing tax burdens, such as the regressive gabela tax on kosher meat. In addition to reconstructing such concrete initiatives, the paper will track how the Jews of Izmir mobilized modern vocabularies and discourses of “progress” to affect change within their own community. While these varied efforts at communal reform achieved mixed results, this paper will argue that fluid experimentation exhibited by Izmir’s Jewish leaders in re-envisioning their community's structures stands as instructive case study in interpreting both the Ottoman and Jewish encounters with “modernity.” Scholarship on Ottoman Izmir during the modern period has focused in large part on the transformation of the port and the city’s marked commercial prowess. Given their diminished socioeconomic profile during the 19th century, Izmir’s Jews were not heavily involved in the city’s booming international commerce or in the port’s transformation into a modern waterfront. Yet, as this paper will argue, the manner in which Izmir’s Jews debated and re-envisioned the contours of their communal structures reflects a deep investment in making their city, and by extension, their Empire, modern. In addition, this paper will demonstrate how standing in contrast to the Jewish communities of both Western and Eastern Europe, who in the modern period were largely forced to dismantle their communal infrastructures to merit inclusion in the larger polity, modernity for Ottoman Jews ultimately inspired a reconfiguration of the traditional kehillah, or community, not its dissolution.

This is a paper on the Oriental Carpet Manufacturers (OCM) Ltd, established in Izmir/Smyrna in 1907. It is based on the Private Papers of the company; the British financial press; archival documents from the French Ministry of Finance as well as inter-ministerial political and consular correspondence from the French National Archives (Paris) and French Diplomatic Archives (Nantes). Although incorporated abroad the company, which constitutes the biggest local company in the city’s late Ottoman history, represented the interests of local businesses in the manufacturing and commercial sectors. In this manner the company showcases both the economic potential and level of economic development attained by the city at the time. As an Izmir-based successful global company --its business networks extended from India and the Caucuses to Mexico and Argentina-- the OCM engaged economic actors, organized production, used modern business practices and strategy as well as negotiated methods of financing its activities that placed it at the cutting edge of the sector, namely carpet making and retailing, globally. Whether the company was buying raw materials from eastern Anatolia or processing carpets for Macy’s clientele in New York City, it seemed equally adept. Through the economic space OCM dominated locally (Anatolia), and the manner it penetrated and interacted with markets internationally, we can gage the level of modernity and global mindset present in Izmir’s economy and its actors. Although carpet manufacturing has recently attracted attention and the historiography is now turning to the workforce (inter-confessional and mostly female), neither the company itself nor the organization and structure of the city’s carpet and related manufacturing sectors have been systematically studied. Yet OCM is pivotal in understanding the role, strength as well as adaptability together with the ability for innovation present in the city’s capitalists on the eve of WWI, features which have hitherto been erroneously credited only for western-based capitalists and economies. In so doing, the paper challenges the view that modernity came from the West and could not be nurtured locally.

As an integral part of daily social life, music-making and entertainment are often overlooked, footnoted, or bracketed off in cultural histories. For the Ottoman empire and Turkey, ethnomusicologists and music historians have provided rich studies of a range of musical genres; however, in the case of Smyrna/Izmir, an academic focus on Greek rebetiko and a scholarly glance at European musical forms have overshadowed engagement with pervasive Ottoman music in the port. In fact, the rapid recovery of Turkish art music and gazino culture after the Izmir fire (1922) arguably grew out of the longtime presence of Ottoman musicians there. Drawing upon Ottoman and republican news media, contemporaneous musical publications and memoirs, this paper will engage with Ottoman music and musicians in a specific period in the life of Smyrna/Izmir – the years of World War I – investigating music in the context of wartime economic and political conditions. How can we understand the rich, continuous and varied musical activity pervading the city at a time when Smyrna/Izmir was enduring an unprecedented economic crisis involving inflation, food shortages, production decline, and unemployment? In what ways did wartime conditions, migrations, and commercial developments interact productively with music, musicians, and entertainment in this period? Arising from a late 19th century milieu led by Jewish musical luminaries, Mevlevi musicians and sheiks, and non-professional music-makers, Ottoman musical life was undergoing commercialization and democratization through new forms of musical publication, performance, and education in the lead-up to the war. Fragile, older, informal patterns of music-making coexisted with robust, newer, commercial enterprises, such as nightclubs and cinemas. The latter not only attracted audiences through the distractions of musical entertainment, moving pictures, and war propaganda, but also staged benefits for a variety of civic projects in the port, including education and the arts. This paper seeks to unravel the interplay among earlier forms of informal networking, rising entertainment venues, philanthropic support, and wartime desires to understand the social economy of music and entertainment in this period. In the end we witness not only the well-funded musical and theatrical arts of European high culture, recognized in scholarship, but also a burgeoning Ottoman music scene of local, touring, and amateur musicians fulfilling the demands of Ottoman subjects to learn, enjoy, and perform music in an empire at war.