Trading in the shadow of wars : commercial correspondence of a late-Ottoman Muslim trading house

Abstract

This work discusses the transformation of a late-Ottoman Muslim trading house in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars based on its commercial correspondence for most of the year 1914. It follows different courses and patterns of transformation through the general practice of commercial correspondence, the commercial networks that evolved around the trading house under scrutiny and the discourse exploited in the narration of commercial practices and the dramatic instances witnessed through the interwar period between the Balkan Wars and World War I. Pointing to a rupture rather than a continuum between the imperial and the Republican business cultures and practices, this work suggests the outbreak of World War I rather than the wake of the Balkan Wars as the actual turning point. The research for this dissertation is largely based on the commercial correspondence of the Mataracızâde trading house, the primary sources at the Ottoman State Archives (BOA), Ottoman and European collections of model letters, urban commercial directories published in the Ottoman Empire, specifically the Annuaire Oriental, local histories of the eastern Black Sea region and secondary literature.|Keywords : Commerce, commercial correspondence, letter-writing manuals, münşeât, commercial networks, merchant, the Balkan Wars, boycott, National Economy, Muslim bourgeoisie, World War I.