Abstract
This chapter focuses on a single year, 1908, when the Young Turk Revolution overthrew the Hamidian regime and generated an atmosphere of freedom. The early months following the revolution witnessed a spiraling strike wave that hit various industries across the empire, including tobacco. The chapter explores the demands that tobacco workers in Anatolia and the Balkans made on their employers during this period, the actions they took to press their demands, and the results of these actions. In doing so, it highlights how labor protests in 1908 differed from earlier mobilizations in the Hamidian period, how tobacco workers interpreted the Young Turk Revolution, and how they envisioned their place in the post-revolutionary Ottoman Empire.
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