There are coal and oil deposits in the Middle East. So why did the Ottoman Empire and Iran not industrialize in the 19th century to the same extent as the European great powers?

by TortaDelBBQ
CptBuck

I'm more familiar with the answer for oil than for coal. In short, very little of the oil in the Middle East within the confines of the Ottoman Empire had been discovered prior to the empire's dissolution after WWI.

During WWI it was thought that there would be oil in northern Iraq. The first wells were struck in Kirkuk in 1927. Oil in the Arab portions of the Persian Gulf (e.g. the modern territories of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE) wasn't struck until the 1930s.

In terms of pre-WWI oil extraction, the most significant fields were all in Persia, for which Ottoman territory was only a transit point. There was quite a lot of haggling over concessions between European oil companies and the Ottoman Empire for would-be fields in Iraq, but none of those fields were brought online before the end of the empire.

As for industrialization in general, the 19th century certainly was a period of industrialization and modernization for the Ottoman Empire, but for one thing they were starting from a much lower industrial base than the great powers. If Adam Smith is describing factory labor in Britain already in the mid-18th century as part of the first industrial revolution, nothing like that had happened in the Ottoman Empire, which was still relying almost entirely on agriculture and artisan production well into the 19th and even 20th century.

I unfortunately no longer have a copy, but the best book on this subject that I'm familiar with is The Middle East in the World Economy: 1800-1914 by Roger Owen.