Görkem Akgöz’s book, “In the Shadow of War and Empire”, concerns the labour history of Turkey from the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire to the early post-World War II period. It emphasizes the state-led industrialization, using Bakırköy, a state-owned cloth factory, as a case study. By exploring the labour history of a significant country within and near the limits of the Global South, the book contributes significantly to the study of global labour history. Since connections and comparisons are crucial for the development of this field within historical scholarship1, the charting of any previously unexplored area is important. Furthermore, the book incorporates some parallels with other countries and regions in the Global South and emphasizes the influence of changes in the Western world on Turkey’s labour policies. Akgöz avoids methodological nationalism and addresses important issues in global labour history, such as the gender segregation of tasks and the use of unfree labour.2 Last but not least, the book pays specific attention to the workplace and proposes the redirection of labour history toward its analysis.
The multidimensional approach, also noted by Marcel van der Linden in the foreword, is one of the strong points of the book. “In the Shadow of War and Empire” relies on narrative analysis and makes extensive use of primary sources, interviews, and literature. The study consists of two parts: the former primarily focuses on the political, economic, ideological, and cultural contexts; the latter prioritizes microhistory by analyzing the personal experiences of specific actors. This division is not absolute, which is why the different levels of analysis are omnipresent in the book.
The introduction provides an overview of the subject, which is the examination of workplace politics within and in relation to the processes of nation-building and state-led industrialization. In addition, this part introduces the concepts of etatism and populism, two fundamental principles for comprehending state-led industrialization in post-imperial Turkey, that reappear for further examination in the second chapter. This section aims to set the stage for the subsequent analysis, delve into both historical and contemporary challenges in labour history, and outline the book’s structure.
The first chapter focuses on the attempts at industrialization in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, with the Bakırköy Factory at the epicenter of the narrative. In a section that concentrates on the workers, we can draw connections to the interwar period. Akgöz briefly addresses topics such as labour scarcity, the lack of labour discipline, labour turnover, the use of unfree labour, and the presence of women workers – all issues that will resurface in her subsequent analysis of the interwar industry. This chapter concludes with a short account of the Bakırköy factory in the twentieth century. Based on the narratives from the factory’s centennial celebration, Akgöz highlights the Turkish state’s evaluation of the Ottoman past, particularly its assessment that nineteenth-century industrialization efforts were failing.
The second and third chapters do not specifically focus on the Bakırköy factory. The former charts the political and ideological contexts, paying attention to state and cultural hegemonic discourses about industrialization and describing the path toward the introduction of a legislative framework for working affairs. It demonstrates that, after a period of intra-party and public debates, Turkish economic nationalism expressed itself in the 1930s as a mixed economy with state-owned and private companies coexisting. Turkey, in which “the single-party regime was now in full swing” (p. 75), followed the example of the Soviet Union by introducing five-year plans but also consulted experts from Western Europe to develop its economic policy. The 1936 Labour Code epitomized the government’s efforts to prevent the expression of class antagonism “by prohibiting strikes and lockouts and enforcing compulsory arbitration” (p. 100).
The third chapter explores the spatial dimension of industrial planning, emphasizing the role of the state and claiming that “with the adoption of state-led industrialization, industrial site selection emerged as a powerful instrument of spatial intervention” (p. 107). The author examines the projects of railway expansion and industrialization in the context of state-building and national integration. She draws attention to the spatial imbalances within the country and the dominance of regional labour markets over national planning. This gap between central planning and local capabilities complements another critical observation: the divergence between the predictions of central planning and the real execution in state-owned factories. The fifth section of this chapter delves into the gender division of labour within the textile industry, discussing the role of female workers and the redistribution of the male and female workforce over time. The chapter ends with an examination of the Istanbul local industrial labour market.
Concerning the chronological organization of the study, the second, third, and fourth chapters focus on the interwar period and the 1940s. The fourth chapter initiates the second part of the book, connecting the previous and subsequent analyses. Returning to the Bakırköy factory, the author examines its organization from the management to the workers, offering insights into groups such as engineers and foremen. The concentration of decision-making, inappropriate task allocation, and irregular worker remuneration exacerbated the gap between planning and execution, with the lack of rationalization resulting in high labour costs. Additionally, the workers – the main protagonists in the workplace – regain center stage here. As Akgöz demonstrates, the intensification of their work was the main factor in increasing productivity during World War II. Yet their remuneration remained low, with the companies’ welfare provisions being insufficient to prevent their turnover and mobility.
The fourth chapter offers several useful insights for labour historians of other countries. First, it asserts that agricultural ties and duties served as an excuse for workers’ absenteeism, with the primary factor being the pursuit of better payment and working conditions. Second, it documents the efforts of the pieceworkers to manage the pace of their work and to implicitly impose a maximum daily production limit, a practice that parallels the efforts of workers to control the shop floor in various sectors, at least in the Eastern Mediterranean. Finally, it focuses on the function of welfare provision and observes that with the “allowances in kind, the state aimed to mitigate the decline in levels of remuneration” (p. 215), ultimately serving the factories.
The fourth chapter examines the factory’s control and discipline apparatuses, as well as their limitations. The fifth chapter, which is gradually moving toward the early post-war years, discusses the restraints of the workers’ negotiating power and their attempts to exceed them. Personal stories such as those of the two Mehmets, Mustafa and Mümin, indicate that some workers were not only making demands of the factory administration but were also expressing counterarguments to the management discourses. During the early post-war period, workers continued to prioritize individual forms of protest as striking remained prohibited and unionization was still immature.
The pressure from abroad, the emergence of a new governmental party (the Democrat Party), and the state’s efforts to prevent worker uprisings all contributed to the acceleration of amendments toward a new labour regime in the aftermath of World War II. Thus, the sixth and final chapter begins with a description of a strike that occurred during martial law and then proceeds to detail the development of unionization. The chapter explores the evolution of radical and leftist ideologies and their connection to the labour movement, demonstrating the limited negotiating power of the unions. Akgöz asserts that the workplace remained a volatile place in the aftermath of World War II. Unionization did not satisfy the workers’ demands, leading them to seek alternative ways to express them.
As someone researching the impact of mechanization and technological change on workers, I can comment that Akgöz’s approach to these issues is noteworthy. She observes that “in the press coverage of the factory’s and its manager’s performance, faith in technology was strong” (p. 159). Yet, she avoids adopting this triumphant view of machines as superior to human labour, emphasizing the interaction between these two factors of production. She highlights the inappropriate use and poor maintenance of machinery in factories, noting the imbalance between new technologies and previous work practices. These imbalances meant that investments in new machinery did not automatically lead to lower production costs.
The description above only touches on a few aspects of the significant contribution of the book, which offers the reader a wealth of information. In addition to providing details about Turkey, the book discusses global changes, including the new directions of scientific management during the interwar period, the Beveridge report, and the post-war pressures toward the introduction of welfare policies. Some of the book’s topics, such as the state’s intention to conceal class antagonism, labour turnover, and the controversy between employers and employees over workplace control, also pertain to Greece, demonstrating the importance of books like this one for historians exploring the history of neighboring countries.
This last point allows us to identify both a gap and a potential opportunity. Despite the book’s multilayered analysis of domestic issues and its connections with Western Europe, America, and the Global South, a gap persists between the national and global levels of analysis with regard to the regional perspective and the countries around Turkey. This is unfortunately a common omission in works from the Eastern Mediterranean. However, the book’s methodology encourages the filling of this analytical gap and the writing of even more multifaceted works on labour history in the future.
Notes:
1 Peter Alexander, On the Road to Global Labour History – via Comparison, in: Karl Heinz Roth (eds.), On the Road to Global Labour History. A Festschrift for Marcel van der Linden, Leiden 2018, pp. 187–202.
2 Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World. Essays toward a Global Labor History, Leiden 2008.