Journal of Ottoman Legacy Studies

Abstract

İzmir became one of the most important export ports of the Eastern Mediterranean in the second half of the 19th century. The İzmir – Kasaba [Turgutlu] and İzmir – Aydın railway lines, the first railway lines to be put into operation in Anatolia, played an important role in the İzmir Port becoming a remarkable export port as of the second half of the 19th century. These railways lines, which were put into operation in the same year, not only caused a significant increase in the terms of trade of İzmir, but also served the process of peripheralisation, or in other words peripheralisation, of the Ottoman Empire. As is well known, railways brought rural production areas into the process of commodity production, while at the same time, more developed economies linked the economies of peripheral countries to their own. In this sense, the neighbourhoods in hinterland of İzmir played an important role in the supply of agricultural products and foodstuffs, in other words primary products, to the Port of İzmir from the mid-1860s onwards, creating an economic relationship based on the export/specialisation of primary products in the commercial relations of İzmir and naturally the Ottoman economy with Europe and other Western states. In this sense, our research, will focus on the agricultural products, foodstuffs and commercial commodities transported by railways from the region in the İzmir hinterland to the Port of İzmir from the first years of the 20th century until the Constitutional Monarchy II, starting from the first railways lines opened for operation in Anatolia and their total annual volumes and how much products were transported to the Port of İzmir by railways in these years and the importance of these products in making İzmir an export – oriented port. In addition by using the export figures of the relevant years, the relationship between the commodities transported by railways and export products is tried to be determined.