In the Shadow of War and Empire
Industrialisation, Nation-Building, and Working-Class Politics in Turkey
“Görkem Akgöz has written an important and original book. Not only is the subject new, so is the methodology used. She explores new paths and she does so convincingly. In the Shadow of War and Empire is undoubtedly a landmark in the social historiography of the Global South.”
Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
In the Shadow of War and Empire offers a site-specific history of Ottoman and Turkish industrialisation through the lens of a mid-century cotton factory in the “Turkish Manchester,” the name chosen by the Ottomans for the industrial complex they built in the 1840s in İstanbul, which, in the contemporary words of one of the country’s most prominent Marxist theorists, became “the secret to and the basis of Turkish capitalism" in the 1930s. It tells the story of how workers in Turkey, who were recategorised from imperial subjects to citizens, lived and worked through the simultaneous processes of postimperial nation-building and state-led industrialisation, and struggled to be heard amid the thunder of nationalist developmentalism.
“Görkem Akgöz has produced a study that will be of interest far beyond the ranks of historians of Turkey – those interested in labour, gender, state formation, citizenship, and ideology will find much of value here. Deeply researched, beautifully written, and insightful at virtually every turn, this is a book destined to become a classic.”
Professor Rick Halpern, University of Toronto
Table of Contents
Introduction
Postimperial synchrony: Industrialisation and nation-building as entwined processes
Part I
Chapter 1 The “Turkish Manchester”: Factories in nineteenth-century Istanbul
Chapter 2 A “home-grown plant”: State-led industrialisation between ideology and empiricism
Chapter 3 Smokestacks of “Atatürk’s minarets”: Industrialisation and the politics of national space
Part II
Chapter 4 The view from the factory: State-led industrialisation as myth and ceremony
Chapter 5 Voices from the shop floor: Politics, law, and workplace industrial relations
Chapter 6 Textures of struggle: Worker politicisation from the shop floor to the trade union
Conclusion
Shattering silence, deafening nostalgia: The legacy of state-led industrialisation
“Görkem Akgöz takes Turkish and global labour history an important step further by successfully connecting a macro perspective of the long-term history of state building and industrialization to an inclusive microhistory of all the workers involved. Truly a tour de force.”
Aad Blok, Executive Editor of the International Review of Social History
The book was featured in an interview I gave for Toplumsal Tarih magazine’s issue of February 2024.
Reviews
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