Tobacco labor politics in the province of Thessaloniki: cross-communal and cross-gender relations

Abstract

This study examines the role of community and gender factors within tobacco labor politics. The sudden rise of tobacco exports towards the end of the nineteenth century had brought about a significant increase in the number of commercial laborers in the Ottoman province of Thessaloniki employed in tobacco processing workshops called mağaza. Rather than industrial cigarette factory workers, this study focuses on the socio-political history of the commercial tobacco labor force. The theoretical framework of the study is mainly inspired by the “new labor history” approach, trying to reflect the life-worlds of the laborers in their unity. Therefore, the institutions and the representations of the labor are integrated into a common discourse, while a spatial distinction is made between the center and periphery. Given the political and economic situation of the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century, economic peripheralization and political disintegration themes constitute the main framework rendering the labor politics in question peculiar. The consensus of the tobacco laborers at a time of escalating national conflicts in the Ottoman Balkans is discussed in regards to notion of the “local patriotism” that developed as a reaction to the women and migrant laborers.