I found 122 “modern” olive oil factory building demands in the Ottoman archives, stretching from the 1880s to the 1910s. Their geographic distributions revealed a striking disparity. They were mainly concentrated in the northern Aegean part of the empire, in Lesvos, Ayvalık, and Edremit. There were 16 demands from the province of Aydın ( where Izmir was located) and only one from Crete (Hania). These modern factories are supposed to bring steam engines from abroad (hence, the idea of their “modernity”) to operate the mills and presses and increase production capacities.
I conducted fieldwork in these regions to evaluate the data gathered from archives. These fieldwork studies reveal important complementary data on the functioning of the olive oil economy in these regions. The region around Izmir distinguished itself from other olive oil-producing regions in the sense that olive oil production was only one of the large ranges of agricultural and industrial production in its hinterland. Therefore, factories and mills in the region are accompanied by diversified agricultural and industrial activities. In contrast, Crete, where olive oil constituted the major production and exportation commodity, stood alone, with almost no modern olive oil extraction mechanisms. It housed numerous production sites where old olive oil production systems prevailed, most of which were abandoned, and some of which were turned into museums.
The reasons for this disparity have diverse explanations, including the local, imperial, and international aspects of olive oil production and trade. The abolishment of the central administration’s monopoly over the olive oil trade in the mid-nineteenth century enabled Ottoman subjects all over the Empire to engage in this flourishing profitable economic activity. The Ottoman subjects in Lesvos (and in Ayvalık and Edremit) were best located to gain the most for several reasons. Due to their geographical proximity, Lesvos, Ayvalık, and Edremid form an integrated economic structure, which largely contributed to the industrial boom of Lesvos (Sifnaiou, 2004). This structure enabled the continuous movement of laborers and commodities. They had a “secure” domestic market, comprised of the Asia Minor coast, the Aegean islands, and the Black Sea, despite the low quality of their products. Finally, they enjoyed a relatively more stable political atmosphere that secured the continuity of their investment, at least for the period under analysis. The capital accumulation from olive oil trade enabled Ottoman Christian subjects of the northern Aegean regions of the empire to invest in industrial activities; in most cases, the owners of old olive oil mills would demand a permit to transform their mill into a “modern” factory by bringing machinery (mainly steam engines) from abroad. This transformation was not realized in Crete, where political instability and wars reigned over and decreased the volume of olive oil production (through the uprooting of olive trees), creating an uncertain and insecure environment for economic investments. It is not surprising that the entrepreneurs in Lesvos were constituted almost exclusively by the Ottoman subjects of the island, whereas the only to-be-investor in Crete was a French chemist.
This economic structure of olive oil production would be reshaped with the advent of fats, mineral oils, and other vegetable oils from Africa, Asia, and America into European markets, precipitating a profound economic crisis in Mediterranean countries (Ramon-Muñoz, 2003, p.506). The olive oil-producing regions of the Ottoman Empire would take their share of this crisis, and the central administration tried harshly to block the entrance of these oils into the empire, hoping to ease the effects of the crisis. However, Mediterranean countries, which transformed their olive oil production from industrial use to the food sector, were able to overcome the effects of the crisis. The Ottoman central administration and olive oil producers were not able to take the necessary steps for this transformation and fell behind, producing low-quality olive oils and selling in bulk to the newly flourishing Italian blending industry to be re-exported abroad under Italian labels.
