The role of labour migration in the urban economy and governance of nineteenth-century Istanbul

Throughout the centuries migration deeply affected and shaped the social reality of Ottoman towns and cities. Especially regarding their population but also their economic structure, Ottoman cities were dependent on migrants. Although this has generally been acknowledged, ¹ the topic, like social history in general, still represents an under-researched field within Ottoman history. In the Ottoman context, migration was a complex phenomenon, involving at times, different groups of migrants, moving for different reasons from different regions of the empire. From among these, this essay will focus on labour migrants and the effects of their migration on the Ottoman capital. In the first part I will give a general account of the phenomenon of labour migration to Istanbul in a long term perspective, comparing it to similar economic institutions in pre-modern Europe. Information on its particularities becomes more detailed during the nineteenth century, when modern censuses were introduced in the Ottoman Empire. From these censuses, a more detailed picture of the systems of labour migration that centred on Istanbul and their particularities emerges.