The Tobacco Monopoly in the Late Ottoman Empire: Urban Transformation in Samsun, 1883–1925

This article examines the transformation of Samsun during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Ottoman Empire through the tobacco monopoly administered by the Régie Company. The late Ottoman era was marked by financial crises, debt, and European capital penetration. Tobacco served as both a commodity and an income source, as well as a connection to global markets. Established in 1883 through European financial institutions, the Régie Company consolidated production, processing, and trade under a multinational monopoly, transforming the economic, spatial, and social urban organization. Samsun offers an illustrative case. Situated on the Black Sea coast, it evolved from a small town into a regional trade and production hub. Régie’s policies brought infrastructure, reshaped the center, and accelerated migration. The monopoly also altered the social fabric: women’s and children’s labor, movements, and tensions shaped daily life. Samsun demonstrates how one product and institution transformed its economic, spatial, and sociocultural structure.