Listen to part of a lecture in a history class.

Professor: The 1700s and 1800s were a time of major change in Europe. During this period there was a shift from relatively small-scale manual production by artisans, so-called artisanal production, to factory-based mass production of various goods. Factories were more efficient and productive for a variety of reasons. Mass production led to profound social and economic changes as people relocated from the countryside to the new factory towns. Now historians frequently claimed that mechanization-the introduction of machines, was the driving force behind many of the changes experienced during this period. But I'd like to show you how this shift occurred in a different part of the world, in the north African city of Tunis.

In the 1700s, Tunis officially became part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire included parts of northern Africa, southeastern Europe, and southwestern Asia. Its capital was Istanbul in today's Turkey. Long before Tunis became an Ottoman city, though, it had a thriving hat-making industry which had flourished there since at least the 1400s. Tunisian artisans were famous for producing one particular style of hat, the fez or fez hat. A fez is a cylinder-shaped brimless hat made of red felt wool. It's usually decorated with a silk tassel that hangs down one side, much like the tassel on the mortarboard cap worn by students at some graduation ceremonies.

Student: Oh yeah, after receiving their diploma, the graduates move their tassel from the right side of the cap to the left.

Professor: Yes, that's the tradition in some schools. Anyway, for many decades, the fez hat was the main product exported through the port of Tunis. We have historical records showing that in 1760, for example, 660,000 hats were produced in Tunis. By the late 1700s, an estimated 5,000 workers were involved in fez making, in urban workshops and in the surrounding suburbs. There were also shepherds who raised sheep that provided the wool for the hats, people who knitted fezes in their homes, and dyers who dipped the hats in large vats of red dye. Packaging, labeling, and transport supporting fez hats became important supportive industries.

But as popular as the fez was in earlier centuries, it wasn't until the 1800s that demand for fez hats skyrocketed throughout the Ottoman world. This was partly the result of growing urban populations. The fez was a city hat for its city people, very fashionable. And also the Ottoman state-the government, was having more of a say in how things were done in the empire, including what people wore on their head. The fez became the compulsory headgear for the Ottoman military as well as for all government officials. You might say that the fez symbolized Ottoman identity for men, even as its popularity spread beyond the empire's borders.

Now, in response to this massive demand, the Tunis workshops had become so large and productive that they were more like factories than workshops. And note this: no machines were involved at this point. But soon there was another development-new competitors began to emerge, and Tunis lost its monopoly over the fez-making industry. Rival producers went to great lengths to steal trade secrets, like the special dyeing and knitting processes that Tunisians had perfected over time. Other Ottoman cities had started producing the hats. By 1830, Cairo, for example, was home to a factory that employed two thousand fez makers. Fezzes were also produced in France, Italy, and Austria. Growing supply began to unravel Tunis's main industry. Money and jobs there were lost. The traditional production networks and divisions of labor began to collapse.

What does this story tell us? Well, as I mentioned, there's a tendency to attribute the rise of mass production and its related social changes to mechanization. But in fez making, local workshops became a source of international mass production even before machines were introduced. Globalization increased governmental control and urbanization drove increases in demand and production capacity. That, in turn, led to increased competition, a disruption to local jobs, and the collapse of traditional artisanal models.