The emergence / development of social and working class movement in the city of Thessaloniki (working associations and labor unions)

Abstract

The multiethnic city of the world’s desire, by the late 19th and early 20th
century will be the cradle for many of the innovations appeared and appealed 

in the social field of the Ottoman society. Crossroads of the axis west-east and
south-north, a melting pot of the liberal ideology of Europe, Orthodox identity
of the Balkan people and the Asiatic despotism of the declining Ottoman state,
will be the city where free-masons, along with “Jauressian” aspects’ socialists,
moderate nationalists and young anarchists will create the first socialist
formations. The paper is a quick view of the emancipation process of the
working class movement, from the last decades of 19th century, when the first
clubs, societies and “cemiyef’s were emerged, towards the last Ottoman years
and the aftermath of the 1st Balkan War.