Souvenir de Samsoun. Interieur de la fabrique de la Régie Ottoman et les ouvriers de tabac. Editeur: Jean Efthychiades,Samsoun. No.17. [The interior of the Régie Ottoman factory and the tobacco workers].
The Régie Company was a multinational corporation formed in 1883 which monopolised the production of tobacco in the Ottoman Empire. The company was 74% owned by the Credit-Anstalt of Vienna, Bleichröder Bank of Berlin and the Imperial Ottoman Bank. The main task of the company was the collection of state-owned tobacco taxes, although it also provided credit to local producers to increase their production.
Souvenir de Samsoun. Fabrique de la Regie Ottomane. Editeur Jean Eftychiades. No. 15.
[Souvenir of Samsoun. Factory of the Ottoman Regie. Publisher Jean Eftychiades. No. 15].
The company opened a number of factories in the Ottoman Empire, the largest being the one in the Cibali district of Istanbul (Constantinople) with around 2,000 workers. The Samsun factory was the second largest. Others were in Thessaloniki, Izmir (Smyrna) and Adana.
From 1887 to 1897, approximately 500 workers were employed in the Samsun factory with an annual production of about 60 tonnes of cigarettes and a further 400 tonnes of smoking tobacco. The Samsun Régie factory was almost always managed by foreign or non-Muslim Ottoman citizens, mostly Austrians, Greeks, Armenians and Italians.
The Régie system radically altered the pre-existing networks in the tobacco sector and resulted in the closure of the privately operated tobacco factories. In a year, the number of tobacco factories in the Ottoman Empire dropped from 300-400 to just 12, all of them operated by the company. Hundreds of businesses were closed and thousands of workers lost their jobs. Many Greek and Muslim factory owners moved to Egypt as a result.