Stagnant Wages in the Ottoman State Textile Factories in the Nineteenth Century: Comparison With European Wages

Abstract

This study presents a new wage series for the textile factories established by the Ottoman state between 1848 and 1900. The data reveal that the real wages of Ottoman textile workers remained stagnant over this period compared to workers in other sectors within the Empire and in textile factories in Belgium and England. As the Corden-Neary model predicts, after 1820, the increase in international trade led to deindustrialization, resulting in a negative divergence in textile wages. Additionally, the state's implementation of wage setting as a cost-reducing measure further contributed to the stagnation of wages in the state textile factories. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Historical Economics Society. All rights reserved.