This episode offers an interview by Ryan Gingeras with Donald Quartaert in 2008 about his monograph entitled Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire (2006). During his decades of activity as a scholar, Donald Quataert was one of the foremost scholars within the field of Ottoman history and in many ways a pioneering figure in the study of Ottoman labor history, particularly among Anglophone scholars. Educated during a period when most scholarship was focused heavily on the Ottoman state and dynasty, Quataert took up the challenging task of studying the lived experience of ordinary workers. This work on the coalfields of Zonguldak, which relied in part on Ottoman sources originating in the region of Zonguldak itself, offers a rare window into the life of Ottoman miners and how it was similar and different in comparison with their fellow miners elsewhere.

Ryan Gingeras is an Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Donald Quataert was Distinguished Professor of History at State University of New York, Binghamton.

To read about Donald Quataert's life and publications: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2011/in-memoriam-donald-george-quataert