Ottoman History Podcast - Population and Reproduction in the Late Ottoman Empire

Episode Date: August 7, 2019

Episode 421 with Gülhan Balsoy and Tuba Demirci hosted by Suzie Ferguson Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud How did the experience of pregnancy and childbirth change in the Ottoman Empire in the context of nineteenth-century reforms? In this episode, we discuss how the question of managing a "population" become a key concern for the Ottoman state, bringing new opportunities and difficulties for Ottoman mothers and midwives alike. Questions about childbirth also became enmeshed in late-imperial demographic and cultural anxieties about the relationship between the Empire and its non-Muslim populations. As pregnancy and childbirth drew the attention of medical men, state bureaucrats, and men and women writers in the emerging periodical press, new technologies, regulations, and forms of medical knowledge changed what it meant to give birth and raise a child. « Click for More »

In 1842, the Ottoman government set up an official school of midwifery to train Ottoman women to oversee pregnancy and childbirth. The school, run by a male doctor, was not only meant to increase the quality of care for Ottoman women giving birth to the empire's sons and daughters. for Ottoman women giving birth to the Empire's sons and daughters. As our guests Gulhan Balsoy and Tuba Demirci explain, the school was also part of a state project to oversee, police, and reshape the existing birth and pregnancy practices of Ottoman women and their midwives. There were certain practices which midwives did for hundreds of years. For example, turning the baby in the uterus if it's a breech delivery, for example, they just turned the baby. For example,

midwives were banned from doing that or they were banned to give some medicaments to women or forceps. It was the privilege of male doctors. Midwives could not use forceps, for example. These new limitations on Ottoman midwives were part of a growing state concern with the quantity and quality of the Ottoman population, especially its Muslims. A perception grew, impossible to verify, that it was the empire's Christians who were multiplying,

while the Muslim population fell behind. I see that the population policies are directed more towards the Muslim populations of the empire, or Muslim women, rather than the non-Muslim populations, non-Muslim women. It was emphasized that the Muslim population was diminishing while the non-Muslim population was increasing. It is really, as you mentioned, it's really hard to know whether that was true or not. Even in light of these transformations, of course, some realities remained hard to change,

raising the stakes of this arena of state intervention. Childbirth was a dangerous thing, for God's sakes. It has always been, and it is still a dangerous thing. And Ottoman midwives and pregnant women still found some room to have the births they wanted. So there's a space for agency as well. There's a space where we can discuss women's agency, both the issue about midwives, childbirth or abortion.

Still there are opportunities where we can talk more about the agency. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Susie Ferguson, and we're very excited to host today a conversation between two scholars who are working on questions of gender, sexuality, and reproduction in the late Ottoman Empire. So we have with us today Gulhan Balsoy, who is Associate Professor of History at Bilgi University in Istanbul. Gulhan, welcome to the podcast. Hello, and thank you for having us. And we are also joined by Tuba Demirci, who is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Altenbosch University, also in Istanbul. So Tuba, it's very nice to have you. Hi everyone, thank you for inviting me. Thank you.

Our discussion today is about how reproductive issues like pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion became major political issues in Ottoman lands in the 19th century. So as many of our listeners may know, this period between roughly the 1830s and 1900 was characterized by policies of reform and centralization and also by huge changes in social and political life. So what we're here to discuss today is how gender and reproduction were central to these changes in state and society. And so how, as Gulhan has actually written, pregnancy, birth, sterility, deliberate miscarriage, and midwifery also all became politicized issues. So just to set the groundwork, I thought we could start by talking a little bit about what we know about how reproduction was organized and thought about prior to this period of the sort of middle of the 19th century. So Tuba, I know you've thought a lot

about this. Maybe you could start us off. I believe that all states manage reproduction from the beginning. But the techniques and the way they interfere into those issues start to change in a while. And before the 19th century, we also have certain information and in what way state was involved especially for the adamant case but in general it was the domain of the islamic law and then in a way state did not necessarily become a direct partner to you know the organized regulate those let's say processes but of course we know that they try to for example employ experienced midwives. They tried to teach medical subjects. Childbirth and delivery was one among them.

But it became a kind of systematically entailed issue in the aftermath of the mid-19th century. But we know that women were quite powerful too. I mean, they stayed powerful. Gülhan would be supporting this point, I guess. So they didn't necessarily lose anything for a long time, up until the 1970s, actually, in Turkey. But there were manuals, Islamic teachings about the proper birth, about mothering, about parenting.

But they were rather the replication of those, let's say, classical works characterizing the whole of the Middle East. So maybe it's a starting point for us to discuss the intricacies of this. Yes, I do agree that states did always intervene in reproductive issues, but also in the Ottoman case, maybe it's important

to underline the non-Muslim populations and the practices of non-Muslim women, since there were so many different cultural practices and religious practices. And women of different faiths had different understandings of the regulation of reproductive functions, maybe terminating their pregnancies.

So maybe prior to 19th century, we could say that it was mostly religion and confessional field that regulated or where women checked when they were regulating their reproductive functions or making their reproductive decisions. In that sense, yeah, we cannot say that there was no state intervention, but still it was a more blurred field, I think. Religion seems to me a more powerful issue in that sense. So we have a kind of perhaps more diverse field where we have different confessional legal regimes for Muslims and non-Muslim populations, and also the domain

of healing and, you know, women who are embedded in a locality who are working on reproduction and birth. So one of the arguments that both of you make is that something changes in the 19th century quite dramatically with the emergence of this idea of population. So population as a way of relating individuals who happen to live in a territory to a new kind of collective. So I was hoping you could just tell us a little bit about sort of when and why this idea of population emerged in Ottoman lands. Shall I start or go ahead? So, I mean, population too was important all the time. So especially in the old territorial empires, the classical empires too, were characterized by scarcity.

So the population scarcity was an endemic problem. were characterized by scarcity. So the population scarcity was an endemic problem. But the way, once again, the states or the rulers deal with that sort of problem changed over the centuries. And in the 19th century, after Malthus and all those new insights from those modernizing polities, then population started to signify something rather very strategic, and it was really politicized. So what happened? So it used to be an empire, Ottoman Empire, characterized by scarcity.

But especially in the second half of the 19th century, in the aftermath of 1820s, actually, that population scarcity and respective population increase rates of I mean these were rather bogus rates because we don't necessarily have a kind of proper population registry system but different confessional groups different ethnic groups different political groups started to be seen as rather competitive groups within the same empire and their respective population increases increased rates became politicized. So that was the point that the empire was redefining itself, redefining its human potential. And it was also experiencing a rather very critical onslaught,

especially in the hands of its European and the northern neighbors like Russia and Austria-Hungarian Empire. And it had to define its powers with regard to population and the human power. So this was a major shift. And the relationship between population and state power was also redefined thanks to the scientific revolution from the 17th century onwards. That relationship was analyzed well. And actually that literature was consumed well by the Ottomans too, because they were trying to find certain panacea for their problems and it was a you know very traditional empire and they believe that partial reforms in taxation system or partial reforms in military domain because military domain is also quite often related directly to the human power. So they said that actually population as a problem

would be more, let's say, a central way or an instrumental way to handle those problems. And maybe to add, we can talk a bit about the changing nature of the state, Ottoman state, and changing state functions, maybe establishment of new government offices, new government bodies, the new infrastructural facilities.

Despite the limitations of all those, the 19th century was kind of a period where, both in the Ottoman Empire but in other modern contexts as well, in order to rule, it was essential to know especially about the population you had to know the state had to have the knowledge of the population its magnitude dynamics of its transformations compositions so that is why the interesting population also started to change as well it was not only like schools hospitals roads municipal facilities but also like police stations, madness asylums. So this is really great because the two of you have brought out the kind of two sides of the rise of population. and also is interested in maximizing tax revenue, becomes more and more interested in actually having more people treating the problem of population scarcity

so that you can collect more taxes and have more soldiers, I mean, to put it very bluntly. And then the other side of it is it's not just more people, but more knowledge of exactly what kind of people and what they're doing, and even the beginning of institutions like insane asylums or police to manage them and track them. So you brought up, Tuba, the question of institutions like insane asylums or police to manage them and track them. So you brought up, Tuba, the question of confessions, right? So it starts to be a question, are certain Christian or Jewish populations growing faster than Muslim populations in the empire?

So I'm curious when you see that shift emerging. Actually, this is a very often referred sort of so-called information by the contemporaries in the 19th century, but we don't necessarily know whether their respective populations also the time that population registry became a kind of new asset for the state. So we really don't know in what way those concerns or those ideas were reflecting the truth. But they say that as compared to Muslims, especially Turkish-speaking Anatolian Muslims, Greeks, Armenians, and there's not much reference to the Jews. They believe that actually the Muslims were resorting into certain vices and they were not so keen to multiplicate and the message of other religions were rather very direct about multiple or, you know, multiplication. These populations were the ardently modernizing populations that the

Ottoman administration and the Ottoman Muslim Turks became rather concerned about their rate and the speed of modernization. So concerns about number and kind of people are also become part of a conversation about the ethno-religious nature of the state. Gulen, if I'm not mistaken, you emphasize that this becomes an issue sort of starting in the 1840s, which is earlier maybe than other historians of the Ottoman Empire who look at other domains have argued. I see that the population policies are directed more towards the Muslim populations of the empire or Muslim women rather than the non-Muslim populations,

non-Muslim women. It was emphasized that the Mazin population was diminishing while the non-Mazin population was increasing. It is really, as you mentioned, it's really hard to know whether that was true or not, but at least we know that, especially after the 1877-1878 Russo-Ottoman War, Ottomans lost a lot of lands and also a massive transformation in the demographic structure took place, where population dropped, but also the composition changed, the share of Muslim population increased in the overall population. But as opposed to those

concrete changes, the Ottomans kept on emphasizing that the share of Muslims were dropping, which was purely, I think, an ideological case. Right. So it's in this context, then, that things like pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion become major issues that bureaucrats and intellectuals are interested in intervening in, perhaps in contrast to the situation we've described for the pre-19th century period, where it was quite local. It had to do with midwives who were hired by local foundations and also with religious law. So in the context of this new concern about population, midwifery was one of the first domains that was sort of transformed.

I'm just curious, maybe Gulhan, you can speak to sort of what is the new regime that people envision for childbirth, perhaps particularly among Muslims, and what did it replace? In late 1830s and 1840s, there was an emphasis that it was the main reason of the births during childbirth was the midwives and their superstitious practices. birth was the midwives and their superstitious practices. Mostly there was a debate about how they were ignorant, dirty, knew nothing about childbirth and with the opening of the School of Medicine there were attempts to raise male doctors of midwifery and childbirth, gynecologists and obstetrics. However, the number of the male doctors were very low, and I also in my work tried to talk a bit about the opening of the midwifery school, but I think the school did not last very long

because all of a sudden the documents in the archives disappeared. And when did the school start? It started in 1838. It gave its first graduates. But one of the main difficulties was that the education was not practical. It was theoretical education. The male students received the theoretical education as well. But in the midwifery school, female midwives were educated.

And that education was, again, theoretical as well. They used only charts pictures maybe some models but they didn't attend childbirths so it was almost impossible for them to be more knowledgeable more practical or better than a practicing midwife because she would know what was going on while she was practicing but the students would not know about anything. So it was impossible for them to provide, at least at the beginning of their careers, to offer safer childbirths, actually. But again, this is a very ideological issue as well. The state or doctors and bureaucrats kept on repeating that it was the midwives

who were giving harm to women and children and leading the birth. But that was also an expression of the process of transformation of the medical institutionalization as well. A new hierarchy in the field of medicine was established throughout the 19th century as well. And in the end, the midwives who agreed with the state took paid and took licenses and became part of that establishment although they were placed at the very basis of that very lower levels of that hierarchy they were still given some privileges such as monthly wages retirement pensions or sometimes they received other help from the ministry when they were in need so there was it was kind of a negotiation process so women were women who had been working as midwives were sort of involved in a new hierarchy in which they were their knowledge

was considered insufficient and they were placed below people who had the theoretical training either in the midwifery school or you know in the school of medicine but at the same time they also accrued benefits from the new sort of state-directed system of birth care so maybe i can add this dimension so it's a really interesting transformation what gulhan just described us so uh we basically saw that in the 19th century, beginning from the 1820s, 1830s, population became a major concern. And then they started to ask what was wrong with the Ottoman Muslim Turkish, especially Turkish population, vis-a-vis other groups, especially Christian groups and other faith groups in the empire. And the first issue was like the decreasing, diminishing of the Ottoman Muslim population.

And the second issue was like not managing population very well. The first group of scapegoats, I call them scapegoats, were the midwives. So they were the intimate ones who managed birth, who actually took care of expecting mothers, and then who also provided certain services in the aftermath of the birth or the delivery period. certain services in the aftermath of the birth or the delivery period. Then they basically believed that the population quality mattered a lot, along with population numbers or the increase. And they also believed that Muslim women were not so, I mean, there were lots of Muslim women and Muslim women, Christian women, Jewish women were trying to give birth with their respective community member, you know, midwives. So they believe that

why not? We don't have, let's say, a larger amount of Muslim midwives. So if you are to manage a big population, if you are to, let's say, increase population, then why don't we train more Turkish Muslim or Muslim midwives? So it became actually connected. And there was lots of, beginning from the late 18th century, lots of bureaucrats. At the same time, students were sent into foreign capitals, mainly to Western Europe. And they also deal with those, let's say, medical, midwifery or science of women sort of issues as well. And quite a big amount of them were medical specialists like doctors. And they also...

And these are all men. Yeah, these were all men, and they believe that they observed the most recent ways of managing population, managing birds. And then in a way, they believe that creating a kind of, let's say, critical sort of attitude towards what you left behind at home was a common case. And then in a way, there were comparisons. And out of these comparisons, I think they also came up with a formula that they have to be reforming the major service providers, especially in the medical area. So this was also the result of such kind of attitude as well. But of course, there were troubles.

Childbirth was a dangerous thing, for God's sakes. It has always been, and it is still a dangerous thing. And then, yes, surely it was related to the especially infant deaths in the aftermath of deliveries. And then there was this obvious need to be at least providing a, you know, standard education for active midwives. And of course, there was this, let's say, the transformation of the trade from a, for example, it used to be a kind of Jewish trade. We know that. So there were references. And then why don't we, let's say, transform this, you know, trade into a kind of, you know, trade for Muslim Turkish ladies so that they can advance themselves. Quite often, those things, I guess, got together.

I wanted to ask a little bit more about the sort of new hierarchy that's created between the sort of practical experiential knowledge of a midwife and the theoretical knowledge of either a graduate of the School of Midwifery or a doctor who was trained in Europe or later in the Ottoman Empire. What is it exactly you think defined the line between a doctor and a midwife? I mean, obviously gender is one thing. But what were other things that defined the difference between the two? There were certain practices which midwives did for hundreds of years. For example, turning the baby in the uterus, if it's a breech delivery, for example, they just turned the baby. For example, midwives were banned from doing that

or they were banned to give some medicaments to women or forceps. It was the privilege of male doctors. Midwives could not use forceps, for example. And there were also some manuals, for example, Besim Ömer had published. Besim Ömer was one of the pioneers of midwifery education in the Ottoman case. He went to Paris for education

and once he turned back, he trained a lot of midwives and male doctors as well. And he worked a lot to open the midwifery school. What he did was important, but also in his writings and in his practice, we also see the hints of that hierarchy as well. For example, in his manuals, Manual Written for the Midwives, he has a lot of books, actually, and he talks about the science of midwifery.

But in his smaller manual called My Advices to Midwives, Ebe Hanımları Öğütlerim, he said that any doctor could go and check the nails of the midwives to see whether they are clean or not. Or he says that the doctors check their dresses, for example. These are expressions of that hierarchy, I think. But it's really interesting, given what you said earlier about, you know, emphasizing that midwives and women, you know, received some benefits from this new system. But it also is striking that it became an opportunity for men educated in a different way to surveil, I mean, the actual physical bodies of women midwives, I mean, right, looking under their nails for dirt, looking at the hem of the dress to make sure it's clean. I mean, this is very intrusive.

I mean, they were also supposed to be religious too, so he always recommends them to pray God just before, let's say, interfering into, I mean, just, let's say, starting their interference or delivery process. So he said that all the time be with God and then just, let's say, try to request help from God because deliveries are difficult, whatever. So sort of this is specific midwifery oriented piety even he recommended, although he's a kind of really secular sort of guy. He just said, yeah, it's interesting. generalized about what the effects of this kind of change would have been for the women who were working as midwives as well as for mothers, right? Because in some ways, they received wages or

benefits from the state in cases of need, but also then these new forms of both kind of ethical and physical surveillance were kind of brought down on them. I also wanted to just ask a little bit about the next stage of the process, right? which was that not only birth, but actually the pregnancy and child rearing became the objects of a similar kind of interest among bureaucrats and intellectuals. So I wanted to ask you both, if you could just sort of describe the new genres of literature of law or of regulation that surrounded pregnancy and child-rearing, and what you make of those transformations? Midwifery, deliveries, birth, and abortion was just one dimension of this new population

policies or the new understanding regarding the functions of the family, modernizing polity and its modernizing family. So it was a kind of fully fledged sort of family reforms. polity and it's modernizing family so it was a kind of fully fledged sort of family reforms so of course there were uh lots of genres lots of channels through which those intellectuals those technocrats actually uh just expanded their ideas or talk about their ideas regarding what should be changed what should stay as it is in in what way the adamans would be amalgamating those, let's say, modern means of reforming family, reforming population, at the same time, staying genuine. So the advice mediums have always been, I mean, they have always existed in the Middle

East. So they, I mean, Middle East had a kind of specific tradition regarding advice giving, advices to the kings, queens, whatever. But the thing is that those mediums, big thanks to the advance of the printing press in the empire and a sort of print capitalism, which characterizes second half of the 19th century, it became also available for the at least urban,

upper middle classes and middle classes. And in a way, those advice mediums started to talk about family, parenting, motherhood, motherhood, especially the hazards of, for example, traditional birth techniques, the deeds and misdeeds of midwives, the state midwives versus traditional midwives. At the same time, in what way you should be disciplining your child religiously, technically, in what way you should be, for for example educating mothers so that they could become proper mothers so lots of issues actually everything on the sun regarding family became part

of this process so advice mediums also started to be uh imitated by newspaper columns so there were specific corners specific uh you know writers uh who were penning uh specific instructions for moms for fathers for example an ideal family with regard to those uh mediums or could be as such ahmed mitat was one of the let's say champions of that position so the father would be reading so he would be definitely the one literate at home so who would be picking up certain books regarding, for example, home economics or how to cook delicious but at the same time nutritious food in the kitchen or how come a housewife should be attending the preparation of such kind of, let's say, meal. He would be reading those books. Then he would be, for example, singing songs and teaching lullabies to moms. And in any way, there was this such kind of picture.

But in time, especially in the aftermath of 1860s, a specific literature for women, specific literature for kids, specific literature for nannies and wet nurses, even for wet nurses and the servants appeared. And yes, it was just as incorporated with the print capitalism. It made print capitalism possible, such kind of demands from the upper middle class and middle class households. But at the same time, there was this urgent need of reforming society, and it also fed the print capitalism. I find this also in the Arab world, that the implication of a lot of this kind of explosion of new advice literature in the press is that the man, at least in the early stages, is that the father is the one who's reading,

right? And you kind of have to imagine imagine what is it like when dad comes home suddenly and sits at the table and has all of these new pieces of information and demands about practices that have been ongoing in families for a very long time. I mean, it must be a kind of strange moment. But it's also, at least in the Arab world, the case that by the 1880s, women too are writing in the press and also reading. I mean, female literacy grows very slowly, but it does grow among the upper middle classes in urban spaces. So I'm curious if either of you found a sense that women's writing or magazines that were directed at

women in particular had a sort of different take on some of these issues than the male edited. Up until the 1860s, it was the father and the father's civilizing mission at home and the domestic ground to, just to say, change ways so that the ways of state would be changed. But in the aftermath of the 1860s, thanks to the expansion of specific educational institutions for women, for example, women's industrial uh schools vocational schools and

in time teachers colleges primary schools secondary schools became a reality and then in a way especially during the hamidian administration they exploded actually and this created a kind of this illiterate uh women and mothers and mothers to be then, of course, in time, specific advice medium or specific magazines, specific newspapers addressing women by women also emerged. And of course, they also incorporated

their perspective. So the thing is that, I mean, from a distance, you don't necessarily see a kind of, let's say, difference between men's perspectives and women's perspective in terms of modernizing, reforming,

and recuperating adamant domestic sphere or the reproductive issues but when you just let's say get closer then you start let's say realizing the tunes of difference in a way slight let's say differences but still meaningful for example abortion was discussed over for decades by different personalities by medical men by journalists columnists. There was even a kind of, let's say, play written for talking about the hazards of abortion in the 19th century by a minister of education. But the thing is that women, although they deem that, for example, I'm just taking the abortion case as an example here, although they believe that it was a sort of

inhumane and irrational sort of practice. Their ideas regarding abortion, especially abortion motives, were somewhat different than men's. So men believe that women resorted into abortion due to their bestiality, due to their, let's say, for example, sex without reproducing and sinning without necessarily being liable to the results of that specific sin. Or just, let's say, getting rid of the responsibility of taking care of a child. Just trolley, you know, hedonism. But for women, it was like, it was a class-based issue. So what sort of mothers you were talking about?

Are you talking about impoverished mothers? Are you talking about, for example, upper middle class or upper class ladies who fed up with giving birth and improving their sexuality, their youth, at the same time, their worth, because proving your worth was true birth. And anyway, you see those differences. And of course, while those, let's say, critiques regarding abortion, or at least its conspicuous existence in Muslim society was actually accentuated, women also protested those those writings but their protest letters were not published what did women uh attribute abortion to if not to sort of um hedonism and shirking

responsibility which was the sort of example one of those uh issues discussed in uh those contemporary journals were like hazards of let's say giving birth so giving birth was not something smooth or was not something totally non-dangerous thing. And then in a way, quite often women were scared of giving birth. And they also talk about how economically difficult to take care of a baby or at least take care of, for example, four kids. Five years, you have four kids and then it's difficult. And in a way, managing a household in a capital city. But we were seeing those, let's say, discussions became rather more popular in the aftermath of the 1900s.

Yeah, and I didn't use or explore that much printed sources or at least as much as you did. So I would be cautious about saying that. But still in my documents, in my archival documents where I searched what the Ottoman government offices or doctors had said, we can observe such a difference there as well. Because, again, male doctors believe that some women did have abortions because they didn't want to become mothers. They were debushed and they liked the attractions of life a lot. But some, they also believe that other women just had to have abortion

because they would not afford that press figures also talk about that difference like abortion due to hedonism abortion duty the requirements of the everyday life taking care of taking care of kids it's cost whatever and women also replicated but they were like talking about the creation of a genuine Ottoman Muslim female cult or a kind of womanhood, like a modern motherhood, modern womanhood was something like being alienated towards our, let's say, proper functions, our truthful functions. And then in a way, they believed that that was a structural problem. So women were drifted into that case, like drifted into not taking care of their kids in a proper manner in the aftermath if they didn't abort. abort. But in time, especially in the aftermath of 1920s, in post-war period, post-World War I period, women, especially female gynecologists, would be critically revisiting abortion issue that actually it was not to be blamed on women, it was irresponsible men, the lack of birth control, and lack of, let's say, control over our reproductive process that women were actually

put into that sort of rather alienating mood yeah what both of you're describing is maybe a counter discourse that's pointing out that abortion is also a question of economy i mean that it's also a question of class right that to have five kids one after the other is a very expensive undertaking and that you know so there's both this cult of motherhood discourse about, you know, women's natural functions and also people saying they're also embedded in a sociopolitical context in which it's not equally easy for everyone to raise five kids. So that seems that seems important to bring out. We're just going to take a quick break here and then we'll come back with Tuba Demirci and Gulhan Balsoy. Welcome back to the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Susie Ferguson. I'm here today with Tuba Demirci and Gulhan Balsoy talking about the politics of reproduction, gender, and sexuality in the

Ottoman Empire. So I wanted to pick up on our previous conversation by bringing to the fore one of the things that has been kind of implicit in many of our discussions which is the question of the formation of new classes in the Ottoman Empire so we talked a little bit about how birth advice and birth practices were directed differently at different faith communities so whether you were Muslim or whether you were Greek or Armenian but there there's also, I mean, it seems clear to me that we're also talking about the formation of a particular kind of urban middle class disciplinary agenda about what should be happening in the female body and the household. So I was just curious how you both see that issue in your work. The class was always there, I think, in reproductive decisions and reproductive policies.

always there, I think, in reproductive decisions and reproductive policies. For example, in our previous debate about how on the issue of abortion there were two views about those women who didn't want to have children or those who didn't want to have children because of their poverty. Here, it's a matter of class as well. In the abortion debate, I think we're possible to see that, but after the turn of the century, in early 20th century, I also see that the reproductive policies had another twist, where there is a more eugenicist tone, especially in the advice books. It's emphasized that those urban, well-educated, wealthier populations did not prefer to have a big number of children while the poor, ignorant, lower classes had multiplied a lot. So there was kind of a eugenicist debate there as well

where I think class becomes more open. Maybe you could just clarify for our listeners what you mean by eugenicist eugenicism is like its roots goes back to like the idea of good birth again we are talking about the manipulation of birth and population actually but here in the eugenicist debate the better groups were promoted while the of course in, in quotations, the poor, ignorant, or not wanted populations, it was believed that it was better than not reproduced that much. And for in the Ottoman case, the wealthy classes were encouraged to have more birds so that the population will become better in the long run. In the 19th century, I don't see that debate that much, but from early 20th century onwards, in the printed sources, there are more hints, there are more evidence of the eugenicist debates, I think.

reproduction, or at least how states actually approach considering those categories. Of course, the states' approach, especially nation-states' approach, would be obviously different in the aftermath of 1920s. And especially during interwar years, it just became crystallized. So the eugenicist approach would be properly felt, even in social policy. But for the Ottomans, they were concerned. They were not necessarily talking about, for example, limiting any respective specific confessional groups, population increase, or not necessarily encouraging people to limiting their number of kids or child spacing. They were not necessarily doing that. But they were concerned that the Muslims were on the, on decrees, and they had to be doing something regarding Muslims specifically. The class issue was also obviously a concern. And they believe that they had to be

managing population, considering class category as an important factor. So they, for example, started to provide financial support schemes, they were not so wide, but at least for the capital and certain regional capitals like Izmir, Samirna, or northern Anatolian cities like Trabzon, or Konya, they did actually provided, for example, financial support for twins and triplets, and multiple births. Or they also supported the kids of the state officers, state employees. So if they petitioned to the state that they were in need of financial help so that they could be taking care of their kids in a better way, so they were provided those financial support schemes from the municipality-based and governorship-based specific funds. And women

were also encouraged to take care of their babies, not to leave them in the absence of proper orphanage systems, actually. So it would come in the aftermath of 1890s. So they were encouraged to become, for example, wet nurses, at the same time caregivers for the orphaned kids in their homes so that they would be taking care of those kids altogether. In the aftermath of war, and especially during wartime, so child welfare and the decrease of birth rates became an obvious reality and the population increase became nearly zero sort of number. And then they had to be doing

specific cases. So they encouraged marriages, they encouraged marriages, and they also checked how couples were getting married. For example, spending much, spending, you know, rather superfluously became under state control. And they were also encouraged to, you know, realize if the couple were engaged, then they were also encouraged to get married. So women's employment was also circumscribed through their marital status in the wartime years in the capital. So if they had kids, then they were, for example, provided rather lighter sorts of jobs, agricultural and some, you know, cleaning jobs, ways to promote. So they're actually kind of concrete policy initiatives to kind of materially change the way people are raising kids. The Ottomans were quite keen to create a specific middle class, a generic middle class, with their kids, with their specific, obvious familial ideology to promote the empire. But in time, that would be shifting towards the Anatolian peasant family, thanks to their lesser contribution during wartime, especially Independence War.

Then the Anatolian moms and Anatolian kids and their welfare would become the major priority of the so after World War One in the Republican period you see a shift from the kind of bourgeois urban upper middle class family to the kind of rural um is that a family that has more kids why do you why do you think that shift took place of course they refer to the uh reproductive i mean better reproductive capacity of the anatolian women and they believe that more kids were potentially be given birth in the anatolian provinces and in villages because in any case that whole anatolian society need peopling especially the lens so they were referring that part and then uh they were saying that our reference group would be anatolian peasant women tur Muslim you know peoples of Anatolia and although their reference was still the middle class urban you know groups they started at least discursively address those let's say families

directly so you can see it in the newspapers you can see it in the advice literature and the reproductive capacities of urban women and Anatolian women were compared, urban women were still deemed to be a bit, you know, a difficult group to be controlled in terms of reproduction because they knew much, they were well-educated, they can actually deal with child spacing in a better way just in the case that, you know, the state needed more people. So lots of the cyclos dimensions, and it's surely reflected into the discursive practices

of the state and the policies. Yeah. We have an interview on the podcast with Sarah Persley who talks about a sort of linked phenomenon in Iraq in the 1960s that actually the focus on the rural household, and particularly the rural woman becomes a kind of hotspot for the development policies of the 20th century. So it's actually a really interesting continuity, but also a contrast there with the Ottoman era. So before we close here, I just wanted to ask both of you, since this episode will be part of our series on women, gender, and sex in the Ottoman Empire, and it strikes me that one of the challenges that historians working in these fields

either are presented with or present to ourselves is that studying these questions of birth, of abortion, of pregnancy, of midwifery are not just kind of adding to the broader picture of Ottoman history, but also have the potential to challenge or reframe some of the major narratives of the field. So I was just curious to hear from both of you, you know, what do you think that looking at the history of the Ottoman Empire in I was just curious to hear from both of you, you know, what do you think that looking at the history of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century from this vantage point, from the question of reproduction and birth, what are some of the big takeaways that, you know, listeners as well as ourselves might gain? Actually, I think that, for example, in the

Tanzimat context, historians have noted that Tanzimat was an expression of the changing relations between the state and society. And in order to open that, for example, conscription or education had been mentioned, but they were related more to the relation between the male subjects and state. Here, the issue of reproduction helps us to add women to the picture as well and gives us an opportunity to discuss how Tanzimat itself was gendered as well. And in other ways, although again, his recent scholarship has challenged the periodization going from Tanzimat, Abdulhamid's second constitutional era, but reproductive issues also further helps us to think about periodization in more refined ways.

Again, I think the discussion we had here today about how reproductive policies emphasize Muslimness or Islamic population also again shows us the ways how Tanzimat ideals or ideals of Ottomanism had been abridged. Much earlier than many people remark. That's come to my mind immediately, actually. So we basically get to know about the potential powers of the state very early in the 19th century, thanks to Tanzimat, and then in a way how certain narratives were formed way later than we

expected. So we basically have the myth of the mythical nation-state building and we believe that actually all those modern institutions were the direct result of that republican transformation and the post-independence war sort of thing. So trying to talk about reproduction, reproductive issues, women and men in that context and family of course just let's say uh bring us to the uh verge of understanding that modernization had a really long history actually it started way earlier or uh do we have to necessarily let's say state it as modernization this is also a kind of this arguable subject so what sort of modernization change maybe transformation or just to see trying to meet the needs of the changing empire.

But at the same time, it is also a kind of alternative modernization and reform history. You are not necessarily looking at the state, statecraft, or the typical institutions like parliament, parliamentarian movement, or the development. By just, let's say, looking at everyday issues like reproduction, private issues like reproduction, you can actually have a pretty good picture about state, state making and the different fashions regarding that in different periods. So it's quite functional. We are not necessarily dealing with making gender history, but actually we are alternatively writing history, the institutionalization history from Tanzimat onwards by using gender as a rather strategic category. It just occurs to me, having listened so far to what you've said, that there's implicit in this a slightly different way of looking at the state, actually, that we might see

the state not as a centralized body that's directing everything from its on high, but actually is an effect that's brought into being by some of the transformations that you're talking about, the rise of a population as a sort of question of quantity and quality, actually leads to certain moves among bureaucrats and intellectuals that then we call the state. And that that's actually quite an important note for Ottoman history, which often uses the state as this kind of already pre-known category. And also we talk too much about, in my work also, I did that too much. I talk too much about state, but still there's a space for agency as well.

There's a space where we can discuss women's agency, both the issue about midwives, childbirth or abortion. Still there are opportunities where we can talk more about agency. And also, I mean, in this domain of population and reproduction, where we expect to find the power of the state to be extremely strong, what we actually find through both of your very careful research is that individuals are constantly poking holes in it in their own way, you know, whether it's by having an unlicensed midwife do a birth or whether it's by aborting a child to the dissatisfaction of modernist intellectuals

or whatever it might be, that there's actually a lot of room here for individuals to make choices that aren't predetermined by the people who are in positions of power. So I think that's really an interesting takeaway. So we've covered a lot of ground today, thinking about the rise of a new relationship between state and society thought about in terms of population and how that's produced the effect of a state

as well as changes in women's lives and in people's everyday lives. We talked about the change between local embodied practices of midwives and the kind of theoretical knowledge formation that was being taken on in new schools of midwifery and surgery in the 19th century Ottoman Empire. We also considered questions about attempts to normalize pregnancy and childbearing, and also the very fascinating topic of changes in thinking about abortion during the 19th century. So I want to thank you both so much for coming on the podcast. This has been a very rich conversation.

Thank you so much, Susanna. Thanks for having us, Susanna. Thanks. For those who want to find out more, I really encourage you to check out both Tuba and Gulhan's published work. We will be putting a bibliography, as always, on our website, www.adamanthistorypodcast.com. And please also feel free to join us on Facebook, where we stay in touch with our community of now over 30,000 listeners and post news about upcoming series and episodes. So that's all for this episode. Until next time, take care.