Can anyone please tell me about a guy called Louis Draghi who worked for Syndicat Agricole Adana, of Adana, Southern Turkey, around 1911?

by nitrodildo

Hi

I have been researching 2 specific steam engines built in 1911 in the UK (as a pair), and I am trying to trace what happened to them.

Strange hobby, I know ha.

I have been on quite a journey of information; and I finally know who the customer was... But his name and company/organization appear to be a dead end.

The engines were exported from the UK to Turkey on completion.

On the sales records, the customers name was "Louis Draghi", which is unexpectedly of Italian origin.

His organization was "Syndicat Agricole Adana" which translates (unexpectedly from French) to "agricultural union Adana". And this was based in Adana, Turkey.

I was very happy to discover his and his organizations name, but short lived as now I am stuck at a seemingly dead end. None of my efforts on Google, whether Google UK, Google France or Google Turkey return any results for this "Syndicat Agricole Adana" in or out of combination with "Louis Draghi".

This is a relatively common Italian name so I have found various others with the same name but can't anything about this guy or organization I am looking for.

If anyone knows anything or can point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it!

Thanks a lot

cin-con

I've found a trace in a Turkish academic paper titled "Osmanlı Tarımında Makineleşme: 1870-1914 (Mechanization in the Ottoman Agriculture: 1870-1914)"

https://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/xmlui/handle/20.500.12575/52573 (Free access)

From the abstract:

Agriculture was the main sector that provided growth in the Ottoman economy during the nineteenth century. The process of integration with the world economy (specialization in production and exportation of agricultural products) brought the use of modem machines and techniques to the Ottoman agriculture.

...

The author says there were 33 single steam engines, 20 double steam engines and 3 tractors were in use in Adana as 1914 (page 23). He used these two as both primary and secondary sources for the numbers:

  • Parliamentary Papers, ACCOUNTS and PAPERS (1855-1914), Commercial Reports from Consular Offices in Turkey (annual reports, Great Britain).

  • "Trade Journal" published by "British Chamber of Commerce of Turkey" in June 1913.

If you find a way to access these two publications, they probably have more details about those engines like the manifacturer/purchaser etc.

I hope this helps.