The economic and social development of Samsun within the frame of tobacco agriculture and industry in the 19th and 20th centuries

Tobacco was the most important agricultural, commercial and industrial product of the city of Samsun till the 1990's and thus the city was fully open to impacts of the developments in tobacco sector which was under the control of state monopoly and was a very important device in Turkish economy. The tobacco farming started in the second half of the 19th century was reached to all time high in the Republican age; at the same time the tobacco processing and cigarette industry was gathered steam in the city depending on the economy policy of the Turkish Republic. Thus Samsun, once a small town, rapidly receiving migration to its rural and urban areas, gradually increased in population and became the biggest city of the Black Sea area of Turkey. It was from now on a city of laborers, but more than, because of the labor structure of the tobacco sector, a city of women-laborers. Our study, examining the social and economic developments in this city, trying to understand the relation between the economic activities and the social change. However, economic action is related not only to local developments but to national and even international policies. Thus, this study, trying to exceed the borders of a monograph, discuss the problem in a historical approach and as a part of a wider structure. Besides, this study, which interested in not mayors but in workers, peasants and merchants of a city; avoids the method of giving only a chronology of the events; instead, it tries to understand cause and effect relation between the events. The high employment rates of the women in industry in Samsun, required to adopt a gender based approach in this interdisciplinary study. Finally, based on the idea that the social process, especially which including the women, cannot be understood only by the archives and statistics; the method of oral history was used in this study besides the written sources. Key Words: Urbanization, Samsun, Social Change, Social History, Gender Roles, Tobacco Economy, Turkish State Monopoly