Labor Migration from Kruševo: Mobility, Ottoman Transformation, and the Balkan Highlands in the 19th Century

Although mountainous regions remained relatively isolated and almost untouched by the Ottoman rule, labor migration connected the inhabitants of these regions to the socioeconomic and political processes in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. Kruševo, a highland village located in present-day North Maced...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of Middle East studies 2021-02, Vol.53 (1), p.73-87
Main Authors: Sefer, Akın, Yıldız, Aysel, Kabadayı, Mustafa Erdem
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Bureaucracy
Demography
Dialects
Emigration
Historians
Historiography
Labor migration
Migration
Migration patterns
Mobility
Modernization
Neighborhoods
Occupational mobility
Population
Regions
Residents
Rural areas
Rural communities
Taxation
Transformation
Turkish history
Villages
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Although mountainous regions remained relatively isolated and almost untouched by the Ottoman rule, labor migration connected the inhabitants of these regions to the socioeconomic and political processes in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. Kruševo, a highland village located in present-day North Macedonia, provides an excellent case for understanding these connections. This paper presents systematic evidence from the Ottoman archives to document and analyze the social, economic, and demographic impacts of labor migration during this period. It provides an in-depth analysis of the Ottoman population and tax records of Kruševo in the 1840s, demonstrating the occupational profiles, migration patterns, and family and neighborhood networks of village residents during this period. Based on this analysis, it argues that labor migration was key to the transformation of social, economic, and demographic relations in rural communities and to the integration of even the most remote highland villages with the modernization processes that characterized the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.
ISSN:0020-7438
1471-6380
DOI:10.1017/S0020743820000847