Controlling the bachelors of İstanbul during the Ottoman modernization period and the regulations on vagabonds

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2549548 _(Table of contents)

This study examines the perception of being a bachelor, a vagabond, and a worker in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of Ottoman Istanbul, especially, focusing on the state’s attitude towards vagabonds. The aim of this study is to analyze how these conceptions overlap and part from each other. In this sense, I discuss that bachelors were categorized as vagabonds if they were unemployed, and in case of their employment, they were categorized simply as workers. The categorization of vagabonds meant to control some groups in society by labelling them as ‘potential criminals’, which was applied not only by the Ottoman state but also by the British and French states. In this context, I compare two Ottoman legislations on vagabonds. The first one is the Regulation on Vagabonds of 1890, and the second one is the Law on Vagabonds of 1909. By comparing both legal documents, I analyze the changing definition to be considered as a vagabond. In order to understand the historical context of these legislations, the political, economic, social and legal contexts of the nineteenth century have been taken into consideration. Concluding my study, I suggest that these regulations on vagabonds were one of the tools for legitimizing Ottoman state’s administrative and ideological control over the working population