Adnan Giz (1914-1989) was an intellectual who continued his writing career, which began in 1935, until the end of his life in newspapers such as Cumhuriyet, Tasvir-i Efkâr, Akşam, Vakit, Son Posta, and Tasvir, as well as magazines including Yedi Gün, Resimli Ay, Yeni Mecmua, Çınaraltı, Tarih Dünyası, Resimli Tarih Mecmuası, 20. Asır, İstanbul Sanayi Odası Dergisi, Belgelerle Türk Tarihi, Hayat Tarih Mecmuası, Hayat Mecmuası, Hayat Tarih ve Edebiyat Mecmuası, Tarih ve Toplum, and Yıllarboyu Tarih. He penned hundreds of articles on industrial history, the history of press advertising, Ottoman history (portraits of sultans, princes, and grand viziers), Turkish history, European history, the "Eastern Question," and Istanbul. These articles will be published one by one as books within a thematic framework and added to the Büyüyenay library.

Adnan Giz Collected Works is the third book in our series: Our Industrial History Through Documents. Just as Ömer Lütfi Barkan pioneered modern research on our economic history, Adnan Giz became the pioneer of research into our industrial history with the articles he published in the Istanbul Chamber of Industry magazine during the 1960s and 1970s.

The most important factor in Giz’s interest in this subject was the Industrial Union, where he worked as an official from its establishment in 1943, followed by his days at the Chamber of Industry, where he was personally involved in its founding. During his tenure, he observed the day-to-day development, problems, and needs of Turkish industry, listened to important industrialists with whom he had built friendships, and supplemented his articles—which were products of memories and firsthand accounts—with work he did by scanning hundreds of documents from the Ottoman archives.

In these articles, which for the first time have been brought together to form a book: the establishment of the first industrial facilities; important industrial branches such as paint, textiles, iron, leather, and the defense industry; the devastating effects of the Tanzimat era on our industry; the first industrial school, the Commission for the Improvement of Industry (Islah-ı Sanayi Komisyonu), the attempt to consolidate industrialists into companies, industrial incentive regimes, chambers of commerce, the first foreign capital movements, and the reasons why we failed to keep pace with industrial developments in the West are described in detail. Additionally, the efforts toward industrial development during the founding of the Republic and interviews with our veteran industrialists are also included in the book.