In February 1923, Mark L. Bristol, the US high commissioner in Istanbul, submitted an official letter to the Commission of Abandoned Property (Emval-i Metruke Komisyonu). Sent on behalf of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, the letter sought to recover sewing machines left behind by Ottoman Greeks and Armenians who had been killed or displaced during waves of intercommunal, state-sanctioned, and state-driven violence in the preceding decade. ‘To make the sewing machine available to persons of the poorer classes’, Bristol explained, ‘it has been the practice of the Singer Company to sell them on the instalment plan.’ Many of the machines now held by the Commission had been purchased on credit but were left behind before the payments could be completed. Since ownership remained with the company until the final instalment was paid, the letter emphasized, the Commission had no legal right to either possess or auction the machines. It was therefore obliged to return them to Singer Company at once, thus setting in motion a complex international legal dispute that would unfold over the following years.Footnote 1
In 1923, the Singer Company was hardly a stranger to mass violence and its financial and material consequences on a global scale. Throughout the 1910s, the company had suffered significant destruction and confiscations, not only during the First World War, but also as a result of various revolutionary and nationalization efforts around the world.Footnote 2 One of the most striking examples occurred just a few years earlier in neighbouring Russia, where Singer was forced to withdraw from the market entirely in 1919, following the Bolshevik Revolution.Footnote 3 Substantial losses were also incurred in other places, including in revolutionary Mexico during the same decade.Footnote 4 Yet, the Ottoman empire—soon to become the Turkish Republic—held a different significance for the company. While Singer was now navigating new legal frameworks and institutions, such as the Commission of Abandoned Property, its experience there was not simply an extension of wartime or post-war upheaval.Footnote 5 It was there, in the 1890s, that Singer first encountered large-scale, intercommunal, and state-sanctioned violence in a sustained and formative way.
To be clear, neither the sewing machine’s initial arrival in the region nor its global origins had been entirely peaceful. The news—and possibly a specimen—of the machine, or more precisely ‘a tool for sewing … useful for stitching broadcloth, leather, and the like’, first reached the Ottoman empire at the outset of the Crimean War in 1853, attracting the interest of Ottoman military officials long before it reached civilian users.Footnote 6 Indeed, armies played a pivotal role in the global history of the sewing machine: military production served as the first and often one of the principal channels for the machine’s early diffusion.Footnote 7 In the Ottoman empire, too, the earliest references to the sewing machine emerged in this military context. Within a few decades, Ottoman military institutions were already boasting of their highly efficient use of sewing machines for fast and cost-effective military production.Footnote 8 The sewing machine’s initial commercial triumph also followed a parallel trajectory. It unfolded during the economic boom of 1850s America, where, like other time- and labour-saving inventions, it emerged in response to the pressures of a fiercely competitive global market shaped by technologies of speed and free trade.Footnote 9 Even as the sewing machine became a household item across both the industrial North and rural South in the United States, its value remained tied to its promise of speed and efficiency—qualities that especially appealed to households producing for an intensely competitive, often aggressive, market system.Footnote 10
Unlike these earlier entanglements, which were shaped by military and commercial imperatives only indirectly, Singer’s experience in the Ottoman empire in the 1890s marked a turning point in the scale and character of its relationship to violent structures and events. There, the company found itself operating in a landscape marked by political unrest and violence of a distinctly sectarian kind, at times directly entangled in hostilities, manoeuvring as an embedded actor to protect its interests. In this context, violence was no longer a symptom of disorder but increasingly a tool of governance, deployed to remake populations and redistribute resources along exclusionary lines.Footnote 11 Accordingly, it was in the region’s fractured political and economic landscape that Singer first began to treat violence not simply as an interruption, but as a condition of operation on a systematic basis.
Historians examining the global spread of the sewing machine have argued that its adoption as a household staple resulted from the combined efforts of manufacturers, promoters, sales agents, and, most significantly, local consumers.Footnote 12 Through processes of material and cultural ‘translation’, these actors rendered the machine legible and desirable across diverse domestic and social settings. Local users played a distinctly crucial role in shaping the adaptation of the sewing machine, ensuring its alignment with prevailing gender norms, cultural traditions, and the practical demands of daily life. But, as this article shows, in politically volatile contexts this process took a different form, in which manufacturers—rather than consumers—played the most decisive role.
Focusing on the Singer Company, this article examines how this adaptation process unfolded in the Ottoman empire during the Armenian massacres of 1894–97. A note on the Singer Company’s global significance is in order here, not least because it illuminates the wider implications of the case at hand. Singer was not merely one among many multinational corporations—it was the oldest, largest, and most influential of its kind during the period under examination.Footnote 13 As such, it played a pivotal role in establishing the infrastructural and logistical norms of global capitalism well before the term ‘multinational’ entered common usage. Institutions such as Singer maintained complex relationships with their overseas environments; they were not always natural allies of host governments, nor did their responses to local pressures necessarily align with immediate commercial interests.Footnote 14 Yet they nonetheless played a central role in perpetuating unequal economic relationships: they shaped national policy frameworks (often to the detriment of local economies), mediated transnational flows of labour and capital, and helped in entrenching global economic disparities.Footnote 15 Occurring at a moment when ethnic and religious homogeneity was becoming central to the organization of the political order, Singer’s operations in the violence-stricken Ottoman empire offer a particularly salient early example of how global firms responded to the emerging pressures of exclusionary modes of political and economic reordering.
Consisting of two sections, this article examines how the Singer Company tested adaptive strategies that not only ensured its continued market presence in the region but also reshaped its business model. The first section begins with an overview of Singer’s thrust into the world market and its initial reluctance to establish a foothold in the Ottoman empire. It then turns to a detailed discussion of the company’s direct entanglement with the Armenian massacres, which forced Singer to limit its credit system and reduce its stocks, whilst simultaneously expanding its presence. Building on this, the second section explores how Singer was compelled to reframe the value of the sewing machine—from a technology of speed to an instrument of civic virtue—as it sought to attach itself to a newly forming national economy increasingly defined along exclusionary lines. The article draws on a wide array of archival, printed, and literary sources to support a multilayered argument: Singer’s corporate strategy and commodity flows were not merely resilient to the forms of violence underpinning exclusionary political and economic reordering but actively recalibrated by them. It contributes to global history by demonstrating how episodes of seemingly localized political violence became formative sites of adaptation, where global firms learned to navigate—and ultimately align with—a world increasingly structured by systemic violence, warfare, and demographic homogenization.
Singer’s Ottoman beginnings
The Singer Company’s overseas ventures began in 1853—the same year it first entered the Ottoman empire—when four American sewing machines, two of them Singers, were displayed and publicly demonstrated at London’s Crystal Palace.Footnote 16 This initial push into foreign markets was soon followed by Singer’s active pursuit of patents both in England and France, where the company anticipated good sales.Footnote 17 Neither the British nor the French markets were immediate successes, at least for domestic use. As Singer’s London agent George Woodruff would put it, until the middle of 1860s, ‘there was scarcely a man of recognized sound business judgment who ever believed that the sewing machine would arrive at a commercial success’.Footnote 18 The sewing machine’s real global thrust came during and after the American Civil War, when the Singer Company, reflecting a broader trend among American businesses at the time, turned to overseas markets with novel attention and enthusiasm. By the third quarter of 1864, Singer found itself exporting 41 per cent of its total domestic production.Footnote 19
In the 1860s, the Singer Company was compelled to make two strategic decisions that would prove instrumental to its future success. First, it established a manufacturing plant in Clydebank, Scotland, which quickly expanded to meet the growing demand from European markets, and later from Russia and the Middle East. Shortly after its establishment, the Clydebank plant was supplying 80 per cent of the sewing machines sold across Europe. It was only when this factory could not meet the demand—driven almost entirely by the growing popularity of ‘family-type’ machines—that European offices requested additional supplies directly from Singer’s factory in Elizabeth, New Jersey.Footnote 20
Singer’s other strategic decision was the appointment of two general agents in London and Hamburg, whose combined efforts aided the company’s expansion in production and sales. By the close of the nineteenth century, Singer was manufacturing as many as 10,000 sewing machines per week and had secured control of 90 per cent of the global market for family-type machines.Footnote 21 The Hamburg office, which would later oversee sales in the Ottoman Middle East as well, was established in the early 1860s but only became fully operational after Georg Neidlinger was appointed as general agent in 1865.Footnote 22 During the next ten years, Neidlinger expanded Hamburg office’s operations to include six branches under its supervision, which continued to grow rapidly.Footnote 23 During this time, he also began to explore the prospects of developing a market for the sewing machine in the Ottoman Middle East. In 1882, Singer opened its first office in the region, with Neidlinger remotely yet personally overseeing the commercial and technical organization of local agents, canvassers, technicians, and tutors.Footnote 24
A few months prior to the Singer Company’s formal entry into the Ottoman empire, Georg Neidlinger outlined his concerns about conducting business in the region as follows:
Firstly the sales are limited, secondly credit is dubious and thirdly this place … form an exception to all countries I have hitherto seen. I have always noticed that in countries where sewing machines are less known and the sales limited that a good pricing can be realized, but here it is just the contrary, traveling expenses as well as all others being enormously high, whereas the prices for sewing machines are so ridiculously low that they are actually sold cheaper all over Turkey than even here in Germany.Footnote 25
What Neidlinger referred to as ‘limited sales’ was not a concern exclusive to the Ottoman empire. Sewing machine manufacturers faced similar challenges in other developing markets such as India, China, and Russia—regions characterized by vast rural economies that were not easily adaptable to the intensive canvassing strategies central to Singer’s sales approach.Footnote 26 Alongside high transportation costs and low purchasing power, this problem made such economies eminently undesirable. As the economic depression of 1882–85 curtailed domestic demand for Singer products in the United States, the company intensified its efforts to expand operations in foreign markets.Footnote 27 But not even a demand squeeze at home could dispel Neidlinger’s bleak assessment of the Ottoman market. In a report written to the company president in 1886, following his tour of Eastern Europe, Neidlinger made it clear that, in his view, there were few places ‘pleasurable for business’.Footnote 28 The Ottoman empire was decidedly not among them. He expressed little interest in visiting the Ottoman domains to further assess their commercial potential. For several years thereafter, the Ottoman empire largely vanished from his correspondence, which, despite providing detailed accounts of activities ranging from lawsuits in Germany to property acquisitions in Russia, mentioned ‘Turkey’ only sporadically.
By the time the Singer Company began to show genuine interest and took concrete steps to establish a market presence in the Ottoman Middle East, political tensions had already begun to crystallize into a major catastrophe—or rather, a series of violent, state-orchestrated events—of lasting consequence: the Armenian massacres of the 1894–97. Part of a broader pattern of state-sanctioned and intercommunal violence, these upheavals were not perceived merely as peripheral disruptions. Rather, they came to stand at the centre of Singer’s concerns regarding the region, occupying a prominent place in the company’s correspondence. In the longer term, they also compelled Singer to test a wide array of strategies that would ultimately help consolidate its foothold and expand its market across the region. Known also as the Hamidian massacres, these turbulent episodes pushed the company to reconsider the material conditions of its operations—whether in terms of inventory, paperwork, or mechanisms for registering loss and damage. No less significantly, the massacres reshaped the spatial logics of Singer’s business strategy, influencing how and where it chose to distribute its machines—both in violence-stricken rural districts and in the relatively insulated urban centres.
Between 1894 and 1897, approximately 300,000 Armenians were killed in a series of massacres—primarily in provincial towns across Anatolia, but also in Istanbul—while many more were forced to flee. This violent episode, which severely destabilized regions with significant Armenian populations, brought about widespread socio-economic devastation.Footnote 29 B. Rosenstein, the Singer Company’s general agent in Istanbul, regularly reported incidents of destroyed merchandise and stolen cash, as well as outstanding payments on machines purchased in instalments. In a letter sent to Neidlinger following the Trabzon massacre in October 1895, Rosenstein expressed outrage at the ‘fanatic crowd’ who ‘not only robbed [the Singer shop] of all machines, but tore to pieces all the papers and books’, resulting in losses estimated at roughly 50,000 gold piasters, with total damages exceeding $5,000.Footnote 30 The Trabzon massacres were soon followed by others in Merzifon, Erzincan, and especially Erzurum, where the Singer Company continued to incur significant losses. Citing a report from the local agent in Erzurum, Rosenstein wrote:
The Erzerum [sic] agent writes, that he does not know anything certain about the state of the warehouse there, as since the last massacre (where 4 of his relatives perished) all houses have been blocked and nobody has ventured out into the streets. As regards the outstandings, he thinks, that scarcely any of them can be collected, as only very few of the debtors are still alive.Footnote 31
The same dire conditions applied, according to Rosenstein, to all other customers ‘in the other stricken places, as all people who saved their lives, have been robbed of their property’.Footnote 32 Although the local office sought compensation from the Ottoman government via the German Embassy in Istanbul, the sheer number of companies affected in the region meant that it would ‘be [a] long time before, a settlement is come to’.Footnote 33 Rosenstein thus concluded by requesting further instructions:
What turn matters will take in future, whether the Turks will be able to suppress the risings, or whether they will be obliged to … to enter into a regular war against Armenia, Macedonia, Creta [sic] & Syria, I am of course unable to say. If you think it possible, that serious complications will arise, it would be as well, to restrict the instalment business … Of course I am everywhere keeping the stocks as low as possible and see that instalments due are promptly paid.Footnote 34
In his response, Georg Neidlinger agreed that the local agents should attain ‘the greatest possible reduction in stock and credit’ and suggested ‘to make it a condition with sales on the instalment plan, that half the amount should be paid on a/c [account], as it is impossible for [Singer] to continue delivering goods, without security, or against small payments on a/c [account], in a country, where disturbances like those in Armenia, may daily be expected’.Footnote 35 From that point on, Singer primarily sold its machines to those who could afford to pay half the amount upfront, suspending its instalment sales for the foreseeable future. Moreover, many employees, themselves Armenians who had survived the violence, were subjected to extensive lay-offs and salary cuts under Neidlinger’s direct orders. This resulted in a shortage of canvassers and collectors, rendering Singer’s innovative management and sales system largely ineffective—yet paradoxically making its presence in the Ottoman market, at least in the short term, less risky.Footnote 36
To offset the market contraction that this development inevitably caused, the company also re-evaluated its spatial strategies and priorities. The first and most conspicuous result of this was the relocation and expansion of its offices. As in many other emerging markets, where implementing Singer’s uniform sales system proved more challenging than anticipated, the company initially identified middle- and upper-class customers as its primary target in the Ottoman Middle East. These were understood largely as European residents or non-Muslim Ottomans living in urban centres, who were presumed to be familiar with Western-style dress and therefore likely to recognize the value of the sewing machine for household use or small-scale commercial production.Footnote 37 Choosing a location that maximized access to this demographic was a primary concern for Singer when establishing new branches. While there are no surviving documents that detail the establishment of the Istanbul offices, Rosenstein’s report on setting up offices in Cairo and Alexandria—both of which he personally oversaw—provides insight into the company’s strategy. As Rosenstein articulated, in Cairo ‘there [were] two principal streets which [came] into question for European shops, viz. Muski and Esbekieh streets [sic]’, and the company prioritized securing locations there.Footnote 38 Accordingly, the first shop in Cairo opened in Azbakiyya district, which a travel guide described as ‘the central point of the foreign quarter’.Footnote 39 In Alexandria, too, Singer’s first office opened near the Ali Pasha Square, ‘the great centre of European life’, as the same travel guide put it in 1898.Footnote 40
Similarly in Istanbul, the Singer Company set up its first shop on Voyvoda Street in Galata, the city’s long-time centre of international finance and commerce.Footnote 41 The second shop opened on the ‘Grand Rue’ of the adjacent district of Pera. Known to the foreign travellers as the ‘veneer of the West’, Pera—and the Grand Rue that cut across it from one end to the other—hosted most of the consular offices in Istanbul and had an almost entirely Christian population (‘native and foreign’ as one travel guide clarified). It also housed numerous department stores such as Louvre, Au Lion, Bon Marché, and Bazar Allemand, all ‘stocked with luxury European goods’.Footnote 42 These initial priorities and strategies began to shift, particularly during and after the Armenian massacres and the resulting destabilization from 1895 onward, forcing the company to actively cross ethno-religious boundaries in order to expand—or at the very least, sustain—its market. Accordingly, Singer increasingly focused on establishing a presence beyond the ‘Golden Horn line’, opening new stores in Mahmud Paşa and Yeni Cami, and eventually across the Bosporus in Üsküdar, thereby reaching customers on both sides of what Zeynep Çelik has termed the ‘dual city’.Footnote 43 The Armenian massacres, the Greek war, and similar incidents of varying scale only amplified the volatility of Singer’s initial target demographics, whose vulnerability posed significant risks for a company operating largely on credit, or the lack thereof. Moreover, the company could scarcely achieve its ambitions of the ‘peaceful conquest of the world’ by restricting itself to small, secure demographic enclaves.Footnote 44 This spatial and demographic expansion, largely triggered by the anti-Christian sentiments and the concomitant Hamidian massacres, proved to be crucial for maintaining, in fact even for solidifying Singer’s foothold in the Ottoman Middle East.Footnote 45
The company’s early exposure to large-scale intercommunal and state-sanctioned violence, which in turn informed the strategies it later implemented during other crises, added a distinct layer to the global trajectory of its dissemination. Throughout its long history, the Singer Company, like other machine manufacturers, faced numerous episodes of violence, suffering significant losses. The ravages of the First World War, coupled with revolutionary upheavals around the globe, caused the company to face heavy losses due to mass population displacement, wartime requisition, and confiscation laws, as well as outright destruction. However, these large-scale disruptions and devastation became pervasive only later in the twentieth century.Footnote 46 While the broader relationship between the sewing machine and episodes of mass violence across the globe—such as the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian empire, to give one example—awaits further in-depth study, there is compelling evidence that Singer’s early experiences in the Ottoman empire were especially formative. The resulting strategies included modifications to its business model, such as restrictions placed on instalment sales and changes to its sales and support organization. As discussed earlier, they also extended to Singer’s demographic and spatial priorities, through which the company carefully assessed, weighed, and expanded both its target markets and the physical circulation of its machines across the Ottoman empire—adjustments that ultimately enabled it to sustain its sales system under challenging conditions.Footnote 47 In addition to these adjustments, the company also deemed it necessary to reassess the intrinsic value it ascribed to the sewing machine—a value closely tied to its time-saving and efficiency features. Accordingly, during this turbulent episode and its aftermath, the company sought—as the next section explores—to translate the sewing machine’s temporal logic and to redefine its economic value in ways that would sustain its operations in the Ottoman Middle East.
Crafting value in the sewing machine
In the year following the Hamidian massacres, when Georg Neidlinger again raised the prospect of establishing ‘a profitable business’ in the Ottoman empire, he recognized the impact of political unrest and intercommunal violence on the company’s market presence in the region. However, he deliberately identified the central cause of low profits as lying elsewhere:
It is true our Turkish business, as regards profit, has been far from satisfactory for some time, which has always caused me great pain … The principal difficulty in those parts, however, is—irrespective of the Grecian war last year, and the Armenian and other political disturbances—as you will please see from the enclosed statement, that three fourths of all Machines sold by us in Constantinople territory, are Hand machines and which is of course as you are aware, a heavy drawback in point of profit.Footnote 48
The treadle-type machine, which often required the purchase of further accessories alongside the machine itself, was more profitable for the sewing machine manufacturers.Footnote 49 The hand machine, on the other hand, was used without any additional accessories and was considerably cheaper. The customers had to pay only for the machine head and, if they so desired, a cover for its storage or transport. The price difference between the hand and the treadle machine was admittedly considerable, but from the machine manufacturers’ perspective, so were the benefits of the latter. The pedal-driven treadle machine allowed the sewers to use both their hands and their feet, facilitating highly complex, intricate sewing and embroidery work performed in an exceptionally time-efficient way. Neidlinger backed up his words with numbers. Out of the total 10,702 machines sold in the Ottoman empire in the previous year, only 2,699 were treadle machines.Footnote 50 ‘Still’, he maintained, ‘by unremitting efforts we are gradually increasing the proportion of Treadle machines, and I trust we shall in this respect get on more and more.’Footnote 51 For sewing machine manufacturers—Singer in particular—the key was to bring Ottoman customers around to the language of ‘efficiency’. They needed to convince them that the sewing machine, especially the treadle variety, was not only an indispensable tool for effective household management but also for embodying the ideals of good citizenship.Footnote 52
Georg Neidlinger’s broad assumption that sewing machines in general, and treadle machines in particular, would be universally desirable was not primarily rooted in abstract notions of progress or a universal belief in economic rationality. Rather, it was deeply rooted in the specific historical circumstances that had given rise to the sewing machine in the first place.Footnote 53 As previously noted, the sewing machine emerged from the fiercely competitive economic environment of cotton-boom America, embodying the social and economic dynamics that, for the most part, shaped this broader context. Central to this context was a sense of urgency and desire for ceaseless production. By the end of the nineteenth century, sewing machine manufacturers felt compelled to boast in their promotional materials not only about the vast, truly global scope of their operations—encompassing such distant markets as London, Yokohama, Cape Town, and Melbourne, as one advertisement claimed—but also about their ability to enable continuous production and limitless economic growth. Their appeal extended to all, from large commercial enterprises to modest households. ‘The sun never sets’, as one promotional piece proudly declared, ‘on a Singer sewing machine at work.’Footnote 54 This vision of boundlessness was further entwined with one of timelessness—a temporal dimension that sewing machine manufacturers, especially the Singer Company, sought to cultivate through business practices grounded in ‘future-oriented’ tools such as credit and insurance.Footnote 55
When sewing machine manufacturers—especially the Singer Company—arrived in the Ottoman Middle East, they encountered not only a new market, but also, as already discussed, political turmoil that shaped their sales and credit systems. They also confronted there what historians have described as ‘defensive developmentalism’, accompanied by a distinct form of time-consciousness.Footnote 56 This temporal framework did not necessarily stem from industrial capitalism or its market imperatives. Rather, it grew out of a series of state-led reforms and a ‘time-conscious bureaucratic elite’ that emphasized the importance of time thrift, regularity, and punctuality but primarily as part of the modern state-building process.Footnote 57 It was not that the forces of industrial capitalism, or the Ottoman Middle East’s gradual integration into the global market, failed to contribute to reshaping temporal practices and time organization throughout the region—they certainly did.Footnote 58 However, it was the efforts of Ottoman intellectuals, state officials, and reformers that most profoundly shaped local temporal culture by linking notions of precision and efficiency to the broader project of national progress.Footnote 59 In the absence of the distinct temporal frameworks that characterized the competitive social and economic dynamics of the global market, the sewing machine’s value had to be carefully cultivated. It needed to gain relevance for the targeted demographics, let alone become an ‘indispensable and general appendage to the household’ in the Ottoman Middle East.
In line with Georg Neidlinger’s observations on the disappointing sales of the treadle machine, the Singer Company launched various campaigns that specifically highlighted the machine’s efficiency features. As Neidlinger noted in his correspondence, the company had encountered similar challenges in other markets as well:
There in former years almost exclusively Hand machines were sold, but with infinite trouble we have steadily increased the sale of Treadle machines, in which lately the introduction of our Art work has proved of very valuable assistance, since this can only be done on a Treadle machine. In the same proportion now, as the sale of Treadle machines increased in Holland, business there became more profitable, and I am confident we shall in the end also succeed in Turkey, though it is a matter which requires time.Footnote 60
Although Neidlinger’s specific criteria for comparing the Ottoman and Dutch markets are not entirely clear, he seems to have focused on the target demographics in each respective region. Not unlike the Ottoman empire during and after the Armenian massacres of 1894–97, the Dutch market consisted largely of ‘people belonging for the most part to the better classes’.Footnote 61 These customers, the majority of whom were reportedly women, were attracted to the machine’s time-saving capabilities, but only for specific types of work. Plain sewing tasks—such as altering and mending clothes, or sewing household items like bed sheets, curtains, and napkins—were particularly appealing, as these activities required a substantial amount of time. Intricate sewing and embroidery, on the other hand—which had traditionally served as markers of skill, refinement, and social status among Ottoman middle- and upper-class women—were not regarded in the same context as the efficiency features that Singer promoted.
As contemporaries observed, Ottoman women placed an immense value on needlework, devoting a significant portion of their time to sewing and embroidering ‘scarfs, towels, sheets, quilts, and other articles’, engaging in these tasks ‘no matter how high their rank, or how numerous their slaves’.Footnote 62 Enslaved and salaried servants, on the other hand, were typically relegated to simpler tasks, such as hemming napkins, handkerchiefs, or other domestic items. The opening scene of Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem’s play Vuslat, for instance, portrays the mistress of an affluent household absorbed in sewing, while her enslaved servants move about and ask her questions on the sewn item.Footnote 63 The scene suggests that although the enslaved women were both interested in and knowledgeable about sewing, the task itself was not theirs to undertake. A similar dynamic is evident in the case of Halide Edip Adıvar’s mother, who, despite owning numerous enslaved servants, performed the intricate sewing and embroidery work herself.Footnote 64 As one women’s magazine explicitly stated in 1880, a woman’s personal taste and skill in sewing—along with the time devoted to using the ‘needle and the scissors’—determined the real value of her work. ‘A woman can take pride in an elegant dress’ the article stressed, ‘only insofar as she has sewn it herself.’ Relying on a servant or, worse, hiring a seamstress, on the other hand, indicated nothing more than her willingness to squander her husband’s money.Footnote 65 Not directly engaged in market-oriented production and remaining largely outside its temporal imperatives, the middle- and upper-class Ottoman women needed to be convinced about the time-saving and efficiency virtues of the sewing machine.Footnote 66 To achieve this goal, the Singer Company deployed wide-ranging marketing and narrative strategies, many of which subtly alluded to—or, at times, more conspicuously drew on—intercommunal violence and the broader atmosphere of hostility in the Ottoman empire at the turn of the twentieth century.
At this point, it is necessary to address a few key aspects of the broader context behind this prevailing hostility. Although the Armenian massacres occurred primarily between 1894 and 1897, they did not develop in isolation. Rather, they were part of a broader ‘anti-Christian’ current that had emerged in the 1870s and deepened with increasing intensity in the following decades. The Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–78 was particularly pivotal. The war resulted in significant territorial losses for the Ottoman empire, which left the empire more Muslim in demographic terms than at any other point in its history. Additionally, the Treaty of Berlin, which formalized its conclusion in 1878, introduced one of the earliest articulations of the concept of ‘minority’, defined along ethno-religious lines. Ascending to power shortly before the war, Abdülhamid II came to rule over an empire increasingly fractured by escalating sectarian tensions—tensions that he, at times, actively fomented.Footnote 67 Moreover, in his strategic deployment of Pan-Islamism as a tool to exert pressure on colonial powers with significant Muslim populations, such as Britain and Russia, Abdülhamid II also imbued Islam with a new political significance.Footnote 68
This ideological shift reshaped the Ottoman empire’s external posture as well as entrenching Islamism as the dominant political ideology within its borders, reflected especially in state-supported economic structures and practices, engendering a distinctively Ottoman brand of economic nationalism.Footnote 69 The Hamidian regime not only actively promoted the development of a predominantly Muslim economy—however hazy that concept may have been in practice. It also encouraged targeted campaigns, especially through the state-controlled press, against non-Muslim, particularly Christian (whether native Armenian and Greek, or foreign European) business establishments. It is precisely within this hostile climate that the Singer Company first began its consistent use of the press—specifically the women’s press—for its marketing campaigns. These campaigns aimed to highlight and promote the machine’s time-saving features, seeking to make the machine more relatable, if not yet entirely desirable, to prospective Ottoman customers.
Among numerous partnerships that the Singer Company formed for this purpose, its collaboration with the long-standing and highly influential women’s magazine Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete warrants particular attention. Founded in 1895 under the virtual tutelage of the Hamidian regime—if not Abdülhamid II himself—the magazine skilfully navigated imperial patronage and censorship while demonstrating financial acumen, ensuring its successful fourteen-year run.Footnote 70 In perfect alignment with the Hamidian ideology, the magazine waged, almost from its inception, an aggressive campaign against non-Muslim establishments—particularly those involved in textile trade and garment production. Within just a few months of its first issue in 1895, it was already urging its readers to shop exclusively at ‘Muslim stores’ and to avoid non-Muslim establishments at all costs. In doing so, the magazine not only sought to redefine the national economy along Islamist lines but also deliberately blurred the distinction between the categories of foreign and non-Muslim.Footnote 71 For the journal, non-Muslim entrepreneurs, whether native or foreign, were uniformly labelled as outsiders who undermined the national economy by charging exorbitant prices for their goods and services. By avoiding these businesses altogether, the editors and writers of the magazine argued, the Muslim women could ensure that the money spent on such goods would not be squandered but preserved as part of ‘our national wealth’.Footnote 72
The magazine matched its rhetoric with action. It established a sewing workshop that initially aimed to provide cutting and sewing support to its readers, teaching them to ‘[efficiently] sew their own clothes’.Footnote 73 Soon thereafter, however, the workshop’s mission was redefined by the journal administration as a specifically Muslim enterprise with the explicit goal of ‘liberating’ its Muslim readership from the grip of non-Muslim tailors.Footnote 74 The editor of the magazine, Şadiye Hanım replaced a certain, suspiciously foreign-sounding ‘Mademoiselle Mari[e]’ as the head seamstress of the workshop. The workshop itself now began to compete directly with Pera’s non-Muslim tailors, offering garments at affordable prices and using fabrics purportedly sourced exclusively from Muslim traders.Footnote 75
The Singer Company made its first appearance in Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete just as the magazine’s aggressive anti-Christian campaign was gaining momentum. The company did not rely solely on conventional advertisements. Rather, it enticed the magazine’s readers through various innovative tools, one illustrative example of which was the opportunity to win a Singer machine through a recurring lottery, held every few issues beginning in early 1896.Footnote 76 In an editorial piece promoting the magazine’s workshop, an author seized the opportunity to shower praise on the ‘glorious’ sewing machine awaiting one fortunate reader at the workshop’s premises. ‘I recognized immediately that it was a Singer machine’, the writer remarked with evident enthusiasm, listing a series of virtues drawn directly from Singer’s own advertisements—cutting-edge technology, durability, and the added benefit of free repairs and training for all customers.Footnote 77 What stands out in this piece—as in similar articles that appeared in the journal over the following months—is the skilful repurposing of the machine’s generic presentation, carefully aligned with the journal’s broader mission of saving its ‘sisters’ from ‘spending too much money on foreign tailors’.Footnote 78
Another editorial, published two months later, made this point even more explicitly. After praising the machine with similar generic language and strongly implying that the journal’s own workshop exclusively utilized Singer machines, the author elaborated on the invaluable service the Singer Company provided to Muslim households in the Ottoman empire.Footnote 79 ‘Our journal is now publishing [Singer’s] advertisements’, the author remarked, referring to Singer’s first official advertisement in the magazine’s previous issue, ‘but how could it not? Given the kind of service the [Singer] Company offers for the benefit of [Muslim] women, is it not our magazine’s duty to publish their advertisements?’Footnote 80
In the following years, Singer advertisements, company news, and related content became a regular fixture in Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete. Sensitive to the deeply ingrained conceptions of production, domesticity, and time among its readership, the magazine framed the efficiency features of the sewing machine never solely as a question of time-saving. Rather, it almost invariably discussed the issue within broader utilitarian terms, intertwining it with grander narratives of nation-building, civic responsibility, and, occasionally, the globalizing world order and its imperial hierarchies.Footnote 81 For instance, when a Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete article introduced modern cutting and sewing techniques to Ottoman women in 1897, it framed the discussion around the importance of minimizing waste—both in material and temporal terms—as the foundation of good citizenship.Footnote 82 Underscoring thrift over waste, precision over disorderliness, and production over consumption, these promotional materials—whether in the form of write-ups or conventional advertisements—almost always appeared alongside items explicitly endorsing products made and sold by Muslim establishments. Such was the case with the Emin Yahya Brothers’ fabric shop. Lauded by Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete as a patriotic ‘Muslim store’, it not only sold locally sourced goods and reasonably priced imported items, but also purportedly contributed to nationalist causes, most notably through donations to the Military Aid Commission.Footnote 83 Products reportedly invented or patented by Muslims were similarly promoted, with any perceived demand for such ‘Muslim’ innovations sparking outbursts of patriotic fervour among the magazine’s editors and writers. The message in all these pieces was starkly clear. Only Muslims could support and uplift fellow Muslims, and to realize this, a national economy based on ‘Muslim goods’ and managed by a ‘Muslim trade network’ was not merely desirable but imperative.Footnote 84
What did the Singer Company hope to achieve through cultivating close bonds with Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete and other similar outlets? Above all, it sought to embed itself within this emerging national economy defined along ethno-religious lines, weaving the machine into the fabric of this nascent economic landscape, no matter how fraught it was. This objective is evident even in its recurring advertisements, where a Singer treadle machine is frequently depicted against the backdrop of what the company envisioned as the typical middle-class Muslim household.Footnote 85 More explicitly, this aim was pursued through indirect advertisements, such as coverage of sewing machine-related events—especially those organized by the Singer Company itself.
A prime example of this was an extensive review of a handicraft fair hosted by the company in 1903, where the Singer sewing machine was prominently featured.Footnote 86 The fair itself was the initiative of Rosenstein, Singer’s local agent in Istanbul. Rosenstein personally appealed to the governor’s office in Pera to secure the necessary permissions for organizing an event that would showcase sewing and embroidery work created exclusively by women using the treadle machine.Footnote 87 The Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete review of the event ostensibly aimed to provide a general overview of the exhibition while lavishing praise on the artwork, described as ‘many a product of unmatched talent and finesse’.Footnote 88 ‘At first glance’, the article observed, ‘one finds it difficult to believe that these are all machine-made needlework and not oil paintings crafted by artists.’ Upon closer inspection, however, the intricate precision and mastery with which they were executed became evident—a level of mastery that one could only admire.Footnote 89 Not only did the machine render the creation of such masterful embroidery feasible (indeed, possible) for customers, but learning to use it—especially with the training Singer offered free of charge—would require minimal time and effort.
Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete’s review of Singer’s handicraft fair was more than a mere account of the event. It sought, albeit subtly, to weave together the individual efforts of the women whose works were exhibited with the imagined glory and prosperity of the Ottoman nation. Such connections were, of course, not new. Since at least the 1870s, Ottoman intellectuals, reformers, and state officials had been consistently linking ‘material progress to economic behaviour on the level of households and individuals’, addressing these themes in both formal writings and in popular press and literature alike.Footnote 90 What was novel, however, was the prominence and central role given to a single object: the sewing machine. In addition to the ‘glorious Ottoman flags’ reportedly adorning the exhibition hall ‘on every side’, Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete’s review emphasized, above all else, the centrality of the sewing machine for the participation of Muslim women in the exhibition. ‘Among these [exquisite works on display]’, the article pointedly observed, ‘are those embroidered by Muslim women’, an accomplishment attributed solely to Singer’s unwavering efforts to promote this art form within Muslim households. For this the company was owed a particular debt of gratitude.Footnote 91
All in all, the Singer Company’s efforts to maintain its market presence in the Ottoman Middle East found fertile ground in Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete and other government-aligned outlets, which continued to deliberately conflate ‘foreign’ with ‘non-Muslim’—often to the detriment of the latter, who were increasingly recast as the ‘internal enemy’. The company sought to carve out a share for itself within this aggressively expanding economic space—but how successful was it in this endeavour? Given that existing data does not provide a detailed breakdown of customers by ethnic or religious lines, a precise assessment remains difficult. Likewise, the exact manner in which the company adjusted its sales system in response to the escalating sectarian tensions of the following years also remains unclear. However, there is strong evidence that Singer swiftly changed its employments policies, fully complying with state demands to dismiss employees of ‘uncertain demeanour’, particularly those suspected of ties to Armenian revolutionary and resistance movements.Footnote 92
A striking, albeit extreme, example came in the aftermath of the 1905 assassination attempt on Abdülhamid II, when it was revealed that one of the perpetrators, the Belgian anarchist Edward Joris, was a Singer employee.Footnote 93 In response, the Hamidian state revised the privileges and protections previously granted to the company and seemingly tightened its oversight of Singer’s provincial operations.Footnote 94 Yet even in this instance, Singer’s immediate response and full compliance ensured that these new restrictions had little impact on its broader operations and that the company retained its title as the ‘Furnisher to the Court’ until at least 1909, if not later.Footnote 95 To distance itself from Joris, who had reportedly kept ‘explosive materials, a handgun, and anarchist and pro-Armenian publications’ at Singer’s Pera headquarters, the company dismissed him as merely ‘one of many’ ordinary employees and insisted that he possessed ‘a weak character’ and ‘very little aptitude’, rendering him unfit for any significant responsibilities.Footnote 96 With some support from the American Embassy, but primarily through its own efforts, Singer successfully evaded police accusations and even secured the renewal of its licence for advertising and other company-related materials in the press.Footnote 97
Further evidence suggests that the company implemented dubious strategies during the Armenian Genocide, such as ‘suppressing the fixed salary entirely and increasing the collecting commission’ for its sales staff to address the difficulties it encountered in collecting outstanding payments.Footnote 98 While the extent of such practices remains unclear, Singer’s sales continued to grow steadily until 1915, despite rising tensions. The fact that neither the Greek Boycott of 1910–11 nor the Balkan Wars of 1912–13—both of which inflicted considerable losses on the company—seemed to hinder its overall sales trajectory suggests a continuation of the material, spatial, and demographic adjustments and expansions reminiscent of earlier decades.Footnote 99 Likewise, the sharp increase in sales figures barely a year after the Armenian Genocide underscores the complex relationship between violence, market expansion, and economic recovery.Footnote 100
The First World War brought significant, albeit temporary, limitations to the Singer Company’s presence in the Ottoman Middle East, especially after America’s entry into the war in 1917. At this point the company lost all contact with its Istanbul office and was forced to reroute all of its operations through British-occupied Egypt and Cyprus.Footnote 101 In the aftermath of the war, further losses—whether due to ongoing unrest or the economic vagaries of post-war financial markets—continued to inflict material damages on the company.Footnote 102 Yet, even as the company confronted an increased volume of claims and navigated the considerable obstacles posed by this volatile era, these setbacks hardly posed a serious impediment to Singer. At this global moment of intense imperial collapse and nation-state formation, when the ‘unmixing of peoples’ became both a cause and consequence of political change, the Singer Company was well positioned to navigate the emerging political, legal, and economic order.Footnote 103 The post-First World War era, reconfigured by the reshuffling of borders and populations, posed a challenge for most. But for Singer—well-prepared by its experience in the Ottoman empire over the previous three decades—it also presented an opportunity to navigate and capitalize on the newly homogenized markets that emerged in its wake.
Conclusion
Moving beyond the usual focus on local consumers as the primary agents of the sewing machine’s global diffusion and domestic adoption, this article foregrounded the critical role of manufacturers in politically volatile settings. Focusing on the Singer Company—the largest and most influential global firm of the period—it traced how this dynamic unfolded in one such setting: the Ottoman empire during the Armenian massacres of the 1890s. Occurring just as ethnic and religious homogeneity was becoming central to the political order, Singer’s market-building efforts and adaptive strategies offer more than a regional case study. Far from exceptional, they stand as an early and illuminating example of how global firms responded to the emerging pressures of exclusionary—and often violent—forms of political and economic transformation.
Based largely on Singer’s corporate archives—fragmentary, particularly in relation to its Ottoman operations—the picture that emerges in the article is necessarily partial. There is, for instance, no data on the ethnic or religious composition of the company’s customer base during and after these episodes of violence. Nor are there detailed records of how specific measures were implemented, or with what effect. Yet taken together, the company’s actions during the massacres of 1894–97 suggest that such episodes were not treated as temporary disruptions. On the contrary, they became laboratories for strategic innovation. In that sense, what emerges is a deeper process of corporate learning: one that viewed rupture not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to test and refine commercial practices under extreme conditions.
That Singer machines continued to circulate in the Ottoman Middle East—and across other sites of political rupture—with even greater intensity in the twentieth century was not merely a sign of corporate resilience. As this article has argued, it reflects how political violence itself became legible, manageable, and ultimately productive within the evolving operational logic of global capitalism. What would later become a defining feature of twentieth-century market governance—the ability to absorb, navigate, and even exploit systemic rupture—can be seen taking shape in the Ottoman empire of the 1890s. It was here, in the company’s entanglement with episodes of mass violence, that the early contours of a distinctly modern form of capitalist adaptation began to emerge: one attuned to exclusion, instability, and demographic reordering. It is in this context that global history must turn to seemingly marginal episodes of political violence—not as ruptures in an otherwise stable order, but as generative sites of strategic innovation. After all, it was in such moments that global firms like Singer learned to read upheaval as opportunity, to turn violence into strategy, and to navigate a world increasingly remade through systemic conflict, warfare, and demographic homogenization.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to Neş’e Karamürsel, Kathy Peiss, Donald Quataert, Avner Wishnitzer, On Barak, William Gervais Clarence-Smith, and Erdem Sönmez for their inspiration and support at various stages of this project and article. Portions of this research have been presented at numerous venues, most recently at the New Sources, Renewed Histories lecture series at the Social Sciences University of Ankara; the Ottoman Political Economies Workshop, jointly hosted by Stanford University and the University of Northumbria; the History Seminar at the University of Manchester; the Genre et cultures matérielles en Europe du Sud-Est et au Moyen-Orient seminar at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales; the Global 1922 Workshop, jointly organized by King’s College London and the University of the Aegean; and the Post-Ottoman Transformations Workshop at the University of Bamberg. I thank the organizers and participants for their invaluable feedback. I am also grateful to the American Historical Association’s Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant, which facilitated pivotal aspects of this research. I extend my sincere gratitude to the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Global History and especially to its editor, Heidi Tworek, for their meticulous readings, critiques, and suggestions in shaping the final version of this article through a rigorous, at times challenging, but ultimately highly rewarding peer review process.
Financial support
None to declare.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
Ceyda Karamursel is a lecturer in History at SOAS, University of London, with research interests focusing on the economic, political, and legal history of the late Ottoman empire and early Turkish Republic. She holds a BA degree in Economics from Boğaziçi University and received her MA and PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania.
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