One destination for American cotton seeds was the Ottoman Empire. When the Civil War began in America, the Ottoman Empire was at a critical phase in the era of reform and modernization known as Tanzimat (the Turkish word “tanzimat” means both “reorganization” and “regulations”) that spanned from 1839 to 1876. The aim of the Tanzimat was to strengthen the Ottoman state and reestablish the central
government’s authority over the provincial peripheries. The Tanzimat reformers also sought to modernize the Ottoman state’s institutions in order to preserve the Empire’s integrity against European encroachment and European inspired separatist
nationalism among its non-Turkish ethnic groups, particularly the Christian Greeks, Armenians, and Balkan Slavs. To accomplish those goals required substantial investment in modern infrastructure.
In the spring of 1861, the Ottoman Empire was in the midst of multiple crises.
The Tanzimat’s initiator, Sultan Abdul Mejid, was debilitated by illness and died on June 25, 1861. He was succeeded by his half-brother, tall, robust, thirty-one year old Abdul Aziz. At the time there were widespread fears in the West that Abdul Aziz was a throwback to the old-time “strict Mussulman” Turkish rulers, what in twenty-first century terminology would be called an Islamist reactionary. In its obituary for Abdul Mejid, The Living Age, a Boston weekly news magazine associated with American missionary organizations, stated that if the fears about Abdul Aziz’s Islamist inclinations proved true, “the catastrophe so long dreaded in Constantinople is assuredly at hand.”1 This fear was rooted in two thwarted plots, one hatched in 1853
1 “The Late Sultan,” The Living Age 14, no. 898 (Aug. 17, 1861): 421-422.
and the other in 1859 among Islamic theological students, called softas, to overthrow Abdul Mejid and put Abdul Aziz on the throne. Abdul Aziz was not personally involved in either conspiracy.2 The fact that Abdul Aziz was a large, physically imposing man who projected a grim, intimidating persona probably contributed to fears about him, as it appears that the authors of articles about him tended to
extrapolate his political character from his personality traits. Other Western observers deemed Abdul Aziz a potentially more progressive ruler than Abdul Mejid. Abdul Aziz was known to possess strong personal will, a trait that would enable him to enforce his decisions whereas his older brother was often manipulated by courtiers.3
Sultan Abdul Aziz surprised even his admirers with the burst of
progressivism, energy, and ability that marked the first year of his reign. He began by dismissing Abdul Mejid’s ministers. Most of them had been in office for many years and were reportedly corrupt. Abdul Aziz replaced them with younger men of his own choosing. This made the infamously lethargic Ottoman government remarkably responsive to his direction at the critical time in the cotton crisis.4
Debts incurred to pay for the Crimean War were the Sultan’s major immediate concern. In 1861, the Ottoman foreign debt stood at slightly over £15 million. Annual interest on the debt amounted to slightly over £1 million. Principal payments were in
2 Alexander W. Hidden, The Ottoman Dynasty (New York: Nicholas W. Hidden, 1912), 355;
Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 100-102.
3 “The Prospects of Turkey,” Coburn’s United Service Magazine, and Naval and Military Journal (London: Aug. 1861): 543.
4 “The Turkish Empire,” The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art (New York: Sept., 1862): 91-92.
the form of a 2 percent sinking fund, amounting to about £300,000 annually.5 The problem was serious, but not insurmountable. According to J. Lewis Farley, a British subject who in 1860-61 was Accountant-General of the British-backed Ottoman Bank in Constantinople, the Empire’s foreign debt at that date amounted to only about three years’ tax revenues.6 The foreign debt problem was compounded by the Free Trade Treaty of 1838, an agreement with Great Britain which severely limited the Ottoman government’s ability to levy tariffs on imported goods. Because of it, the Ottomans were forced to rely on high export tariffs, internal tariffs on their own manufactures, and direct taxes on agricultural producers for revenue. The cumulative result was a flood of imported European manufactured goods without offsetting exports. This caused a severe drain of specie out of the country.7 Sultan Abdul Aziz grasped the opportunity that the American Civil War gave the Ottoman Empire to seize a share of the English cotton market, correct the trade imbalance, service the debt, and raise surplus funds to pay for modern infrastructure.
Much of the groundwork for expanding Ottoman cotton production had already been laid during the fifteen years leading up to the cotton crisis. The Ottoman Empire had a historic reputation as a premier cotton-growing region. It had once been England’s largest cotton supplier. Queen Elizabeth I established diplomatic relations
5 Martin, The Statesman’s Year-Book: A Statistical, Mercantile, and Historical Account of the States and Sovereigns of the Civilised World, a Manual for Politicians and Merchants for the Year 1868, 495.
6 J. Lewis Farley, The Resources of Turkey (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862), 21 and 57. This first Ottoman Bank was not the same institution as the Imperial Ottoman Bank, or Banque Impériale Ottomane chartered on Feb. 4, 1863, with French capital and management.
7 Şevket Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820-1913 (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 18-26.
with the Sublime Porte, as the Ottoman government was called, in 1583 specifically so that the Levant Company could buy Turkish cotton goods.8 The Ottomans did not lose this important cotton trade until after the rise of the American monopoly. When weather and caterpillars badly damaged the American crop in 1845, the Ottomans sought to redress their imbalance of trade with Britain and the related decline in domestic prosperity by revitalizing their cotton growing industry.9 For help they turned not to Great Britain, but to the United States.
In 1846, Sultan Abdul Mejid’s Grand Vizier Reschid Pasha wrote to President James K. Polk asking that an experienced cotton planter from the American South be sent to Turkey to give instruction in American cotton growing methods. To undertake the mission, Polk chose Dr. James Bolton Davis, a wealthy, politically
well-connected South Carolina physician who had retired from medical practice to pursue scientific agriculture. Davis took six African-American slaves from his plantation in Fairfield County, South Carolina, with him to Turkey.10 Described as “intelligent and experienced” cotton growers, the men were probably drivers, or slave foremen, rather than ordinary field hands.11 Davis spent three years in Turkey and while there
8 William H. Hale and Ali Ihsan Bağiş, Four Centuries of Turco-British Relations: Studies in Diplomatic, Economic, and Cultural Affairs (Beverly, N. Humberside: Eothen Press, 1984), passim.
9 Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 109-127.
10 Southern Agriculturalist 6, no. 9 (Sept., 1846): 360; Workers of the Writers’ Program of the WPA, South Carolina, A Guide to the Palmetto State (Columbia: South Carolina State Dept. of Education, 1941), 438; James Bolton Davis to John C. Calhoun, Nov. 6, 1847, in Robert Lee
Meriweather, William E. Hemphill, et al, eds., The Papers of John C. Calhoun (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1998), 647.
11 Israel D. Andrews, “The Cotton Crop of the United States,” in U.S. Congress. Senate.
Communication from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate of March 8, 1851, The Report of Israel D. Andrews, Consul of the United States for Canada and New Brunswick on the Trade and Commerce of the British North American Colonies and upon Trade of the Great Lakes and Rivers; also, Notices of Internal Improvements in each State, of the Gulf
founded an Ottoman government agricultural school and a two thousand acre demonstration farm especially dedicated to cotton growing at Scutari (Üsküdar) on the Asia Minor shore of the Bosporus directly across the strait from Constantinople.
Classes of one hundred peasants at a time were put through a yearlong course of classroom and practical field instruction in cotton growing. The students came from all parts of the Ottoman Empire and represented all of its ethnic groups.12 U.S. Navy officer and explorer William Francis Lynch visited in 1848 and implied that the slaves that Davis brought with him would be freed and remain in Turkey.13 Lynch’s remarks, a report that the Semi-Weekly Natchez Courier reprinted from the
Philadelphia Ledger in 1847, and a conversation between Davis and one of them, a
man named Abram, reported in History of the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina make it seem likely that the African-Americans were the
agricultural school’s field instructors.14 In 1848 Sultan Abdul Mejid toured the farm and spent the following night with Dr. Davis, his wife, and their children. This was
of Mexico and Straits of Florida, and a Paper on the Cotton Crop of the United States. Ex. Doc. No.
112. 32nd Cong., 1st sess. (Washington: GPO, 1853), 820-821; State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina, History of the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina (Columbia: State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina, 1916), 223-229; Charles MacFarlane, Turkey and its Destiny: The result of journeys made in 1847 and 1848 to examine into the state of that Country, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), 45-50.
12 Missionary Herald (Sept. 1851): 287.
13 William Francis Lynch, Narrative of the United States’ Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (London: Richard Bentley, 1849), 59-60.
14 Semi-Weekly Natchez Courier (Natchez, MS), Nov. 12, 1847; State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina, History of the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina, 223-229.
reportedly the first time that an Ottoman Sultan was ever an overnight guest in the household of a Westerner.15
The keen interest that Abdul Aziz later displayed in cotton probably dated from this time. The days when heirs to the Ottoman throne were kept imprisoned in the so-called “Golden Cage” had ended, but they were still kept out of the public eye and away from involvement in governmental affairs. Prior to becoming Sultan, Abdul Aziz spent much of his time on a large agricultural estate at Beicos, a village on the eastern shore of the Bosporus near Scutari, pursuing agriculture as an avocation.16 Contemporary sources that mention Abdul Aziz in connection with his agricultural interests present a very different picture of him than the one history usually presents, which portrays him as having received only “a simple Muslim education.”17 In fact, he studied the latest Western agricultural methods and established a model farm on his estate.18 Although no direct link can be established, Abdul Aziz was sixteen years of age when James Bolton Davis arrived and founded the agricultural school in close proximity to his Beicos estate, so it is reasonable to suppose that either Davis sparked the young Ottoman heir apparent’s interest in agriculture or Abdul Aziz’s pre-existing interest lay behind Sultan Abdul Mejid’s request to President Polk for an American cotton expert.
15 State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina, History of the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society of South Carolina, 223-229.
16 Hidden, The Ottoman Dynasty, 382; Leila Hanoum, A Tragedy at Constantinople (New York: William S. Gottsberger, 1888), 66-67.
17 Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 109.
18 George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, eds., The American Cyclopædia: A Popular dictionary of General Knowledge, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1873), 16; Hanoum, A Tragedy at Constantinople, 66-67.
Poor health forced Davis to return to the United States in 1849, but the
agricultural school and its model farm continued to operate under the direction of Mr.
J. Janesco, about whom nothing more than his name could be discovered. Sultan Abdul Mejid kept the school under his personal supervision and sometimes presided when formal final examinations were administered.19 Experiments with different kinds of cotton seed continued for fifteen years. Test plantings of seeds purchased in the United States were conducted over a wide geographic area, and achieved some success.20 Evidence for this comes from the Ottoman exhibit at the great world’s fair held at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, in 1851 which featured specimens of high quality cotton gown in the Empire’s southern provinces.21 A British
government report written in 1862 briefly mentioned the Ottoman seed trials, and noted that an Ottoman pamphlet about growing “Orleans” cotton said that a “large portion” of those who tried the imported seed, “rid their places of every kind of seed but the pure Mexican or Gulf Hill Mexican seed.”22 This suggests the possibility that some of the cotton grown from “native” seed in the 1860s was in fact local varieties derived from American Petit Gulf or from the same Mexican foundation stock from which Petit Gulf was developed.
19 Thomas Galland Horton, Turkey: the People, Country, and Government (London: Mason and Co., 1854), 71.
20 John P. Brown, “Cotton Culture in Turkey,” Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 26, no. 2 (February, 1852): 156-159.
21 Empire Ottoman, Coup d’Œil Général sur l’Exposition Nationale à Constantinople (General information about the National Exposition in Constantinople) (Constantinople: Extraits du Journal de Constantinople, 1863), 84.
22 Great Britain. Foreign Office. Cotton Supply from the Ottoman Empire. Foreign Office and Commonwealth Collection, 1862 (The University of Manchester, John Rylands University Library, JISC Digitization Programme http://www.jstor.org/stable/60233684), 54. Accessed 10/03/2011.
Hereafter cited Foreign Office, Cotton Supply from the Ottoman Empire.
From Great Britain’s perspective, the Ottoman Empire was ideally situated geographically, economically, and politically to become a cotton field. Because of the geostrategic position of the Sultan’s domains and the fact that they shared a common enemy, Russia, British-Ottoman relations, though at times strained, were historically friendly. British strategists saw preservation of the Ottoman Empire as essential to containing Russian expansionism into the Balkans and the Near East, and it was for that geostrategic reason that Great Britain fought the Crimean War with Russia in 1854-56. In 1861 the British-Ottoman strategic relationship had never been stronger.
The impressive new High Renaissance style British Embassy in the Pera
neighborhood of Constantinople housed the largest diplomatic staff of any British legation in the world, a total of thirty-seven persons. These reported to the
ambassador, Sir Henry Bulwer. In addition there were fifty-one British consulates scattered in towns and cities throughout the sprawling Ottoman Empire. Great Britain’s Levantine consuls were generally a very experienced group, many of them with more than fifteen years of service at their posts. The consuls reported both to Consul-General Abraham C. Cumberbatch in Constantinople and directly to Sir Austen Henry Layard at the Foreign Office.23
The Cotton Supply Association’s 1859 experiments with American seed in the Ottoman lands were generally successful.24 Plans to establish model farms in the
23 G. R. Berridge, British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the Present: A Study in the Evolution of the Resident Embassy (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2009), passim; Gordon L. Iseminger, “The Old Turkish Hands: The British Levantine Consuls, 1856-1876” Middle East Journal 22, no. 3 (Summer 1968): 297-316.
24 Cotton Supply Reporter 1, no. 44 (June 15, 1860): 157.
Smyrna hinterland were begun at that time.25 The beginnings of the necessary
institutions for incorporating the Ottoman Empire into world commerce were already in place. The first Ottoman Bank, founded in 1856, was funded by British capital. Its first branch was located in Smyrna, the Ottoman Empire’s traditional cotton port.26 British merchants had entrée into the Ottoman cotton market because English candle makers imported a small quantity of Smyrna cotton, which they used to make
candlewicks.27 A colony of English merchants had existed in Smyrna for several generations, and in May 1861 they formed a company for the purpose of buying and exporting cotton.28
In terms of communications and travel Turkey was much closer to England than was the United States. It took about two weeks for communications to travel by fast steamer from England to New York. High priority messages could reach
Constantinople instantaneously because from 1855 the Ottoman capital had
telegraphic communications with England via a submarine cable beneath the English Channel to Ostend on the Belgian coast, where it connected to an overland line that ran through Germany, Austria, and the Balkans.29 Mail and passengers could travel from London to Constantinople via the Channel ferry-Calais-Paris-Marseille rail route and from Marseille to the Ottoman capital by regularly scheduled steamship in
25 Cotton Supply Reporter 1, no. 21 (July 1, 1859): 172.
26 John Karatzoglou, The Imperial Ottoman Bank in Salonika: The First 25 Years, 1864-1890 (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Archives & Research Centre, 2003), 4.
27 Watts, The Cotton Supply Association: Its Origin and Progress, 51.
28 Cotton Supply Reporter 1, no. 67 (June 1, 1861): 525.
29 Berridge, British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the Present, passim.
about ten days. A sailing ship could make the trip from the Dardanelles to Liverpool with bulk cargo in about six weeks. This was about the same length of time as it took a cotton boat to reach Liverpool from New Orleans.30
Britain possessed capabilities to disseminate information in the Ottoman Empire as well. The Turkish-language weekly newspaper Ceride-i Havadis (Register of Events), on which the Ottoman ruling class depended for Western news, was British owned and managed.31 Editorial control of the influential Constantinople-based dual language French-English Levant Herald was in British hands. Two British educational institutions were located in Smyrna, Burnabat English College and the English Commercial School.32
Substantial improvements had already been made to communications within the Ottoman Empire. These were begun at the initiative of the Ottoman government in the 1830s and financed by British and European investors. Steamboat navigation began on the lower Danube River and Black Sea in 1847, the vessels owned and operated by the Austrians. In 1851 steam ferries operated by the Ottoman state began carrying passengers and freight on the Bosporus. Five years later a
London-headquartered British company headed by Sir Macdonald Stephenson began building a railroad from the port of Smyrna on the Ægean Sea to Aidin, 70 miles to the
30 Adam W. Kirkaldy, British Shipping, Its History, Organization and Importance (London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1914), 348-372, Appendix XVIII.
31 Orhan Kurmuş, “The Cotton Famine and its effects on the Ottoman Empire” in Huri İslamoğlu-İnan, ed., The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 163.
32 Charles de Scherzer, La Province de Smyrne, considérée au Point de vue Géographique, économique et intellectuel (The province of Smyrna, considered from the geographic, economic, and intellectual points of view) (Vienne: Alfred Hölder, 1873), 66. Microfilm. Harvard College Library.
southeast in Anatolia. The Ottoman government guaranteed the company 6 percent annual return on £1,200,000 capital for 50 years. Difficulty raising the needed capital impeded progress, and the British engineer in charge, a Mr. Meredith, was initially able to employ only 45 laborers to lay track. All the necessary preparations had already been made before the American Civil War began, however, and in July 1859 a new contractor, T. R. Crampton, took over responsibility for building the railroad.
Crampton advanced funds from his own resources and pushed ahead with
construction. Over 70 miles of track had been laid by the end of 1861, and, just as importantly, a harbor station and wharf had been completed for the handling of
railroad cargo to and from ships.33 Telegraph construction was British-backed as well;
the line from Constantinople to Baghdad that began operating in 1861 was part of an intended overland line through Iran to India.34
The Smyrna-Aidin Railroad took a prominent role in promoting cotton growing as early as 1858, when its officials assisted in the Cotton Supply Association’s seed experiments. The railroad subsequently established a
demonstration farm near Smyrna. One of the railroad company’s stated goals was to lay tracks 150 miles beyond Aidin up the fertile cotton-growing Meander River
demonstration farm near Smyrna. One of the railroad company’s stated goals was to lay tracks 150 miles beyond Aidin up the fertile cotton-growing Meander River