Event details

This talk examines the social history of oriental carpets, particularly the production and circulation of carpets by Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. It discusses the central role of mass violence against Armenians in the creation of the labor market for the production of carpets in the late Ottoman Empire. It brings together the stories of women and orphans as laborers, the communal and transnational agents who were involved in the trade through relief industries, and Armenian migrants, collectors, designers and masters who made the oriental carpets one of the most important export good in the late Ottoman Empire.

Yaşar Tolga Cora is an Associate Professor of Late Ottoman and Turkish History in the Department of History at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He is a historian of social and economic history of the late Ottoman Empire with a particular focus on the Armenians in the empire. His current research is on the links between violence and production of traditional textiles for global markets in the early twentieth century.