Agricultural Knowledge, Local Environment, and the Experts: Silkworm Production in Nineteenth-Century Bursa

This article is a case study of silkworm production in Bursa in the nineteenth century. This case was chosen mainly to discuss the relationship between scientific agricultural knowledge and peasants’ knowledge. The article argues that neither type of knowledge was static and that hybrid knowledge was the product of the interaction between scientific and peasants’ knowledge. Furthermore, it analyses how scientific knowledge turned from a cure for pebrine, a disease of silkworms, into a means of standardisation and control of the peasants’ production by the government and the Ottoman Public Debt Administration so that they could increase their revenue from sericulture. In this framework, the article also discusses how peasants’ knowledge changed partly by embracing scientific knowledge and partly by resisting it.