Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922: An Introduction

367 Pages·1999·20.003 MB·English

by  Donald Quataert

Page i
Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550­1922
Start of Citation[PU]State University of New York Press[/PU][DP]2000[/DP]End of Citation
Page ii
SUNY series in the Social and Economic
History of the Middle East
Donald Quataert, editor
Start of Citation[PU]State University of New York Press[/PU][DP]2000[/DP]End of Citation
Page iii
Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550­1922
An Introduction
Edited By
Donald Quataert

Start of Citation[PU]State University of New York Press[/PU][DP]2000[/DP]End of Citation
Page iv
Published by
State University of New York Press
© 2000 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or 
transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior 
permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, address State University of New York Press,
State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246
Production by Diane Ganeles
Marketing by Nancy Farrell
Library of Congress Cataloging­in­Publication Data
Consumption studies and the history of the Ottoman Empire, 1550­1922: 
an introduction / edited by Donald Quataert.
p. cm.—(SUNY series in the social and economic history of the middle East) 
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0­7914­4431­7 (acid free paper).—ISBN 0­7914­4432­5 (pbk. : acid free paper)
1. Consumption (Economics)—Turkey—History.  I. Quataert, 
Donald, 1941­. II. Series. 
HC495.C6C66    2000
339.4'7'09561—dc21                                           99­24669 
                                                                                  CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Start of Citation[PU]State University of New York Press[/PU][DP]2000[/DP]End of Citation
Page v
For Bethany
—DQ
Start of Citation[PU]State University of New York Press[/PU][DP]2000[/DP]End of Citation
Page vi
Guide to Pronounciation of Turkish Words
C, c = "j" as in juice
Ç, ç = "ch" as in cheek
 = soft "g," hardly pronounced
I, 1 = without a dot, pronounced like the first syllable of "earnest"
I, i = with a dot, between "in" and "eel"
Ö, ö = as in the umlaut o in German
> •
 = as in "sheet"
Ü, ü = as in the umlat ü in German
^ = used to denote a lenghtened vowel (a, i, and u) or to palatize a preceding g, k, or l
After Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Âli (1541­1600) Princeton, 1986, xvi.
Start of Citation[PU]State University of New York Press[/PU][DP]2000[/DP]End of Citation
Page vii
Contents
1. Introduction 1
Donald Quataert
2. Research on the History of Ottoman Consumption: A Preliminary Exploration  15
of Sources and Models
Suraiya Faroqhi
3. Toward an Isolario of the Ottoman Inheritance Inventory, with Special  45
Reference to Manisa (ca. 1600­1700)
Joyce Hedda Matthews
4. The Age of Tulips: Confluence and Conflict in Early Modern Consumer  83
Culture (1550­1730)
Ariel Salzmann
5. Aspects of the Ottoman Elite's Food Consumption: Looking for "Staples,"  107
"Luxuries," and "Delicacies'' in a Changing Century
Tüilay Artan
6. The Transition to Mass Fashion System Dress in the Later Ottoman Empire 201
Charlotte Jirousek
7. Cheap and Easy: The Creation of Consumer Culture in Late Ottoman  243
Society
Elizabeth B. Frierson
8. Personal, Public, and Political (Re)Constructions: Photographs and  261
Consumption
Nancy Micklewright
Start of Citation[PU]State University of New York Press[/PU][DP]2000[/DP]End of Citation
Page viii
9. Goods in the Mahalle: Distributional Encounters in Eighteenth­Century  289
Istanbul
Madeline C. Zilfi
Bibliography 313
Index 353
Start of Citation[PU]State University of New York Press[/PU][DP]2000[/DP]End of Citation
1
Introduction 1
Donald Quataert
For more than a decade, scholars in European, North American, and
East Asian history have been pursuing consumption studies as an
important new key to unlocking the past. Materialists to the core, they
argue that the consumption of goods, not their production, drives
history. The comestibles, clothes, furniture, and household goods that
nourish and adorn our bodies and homes, they say, define our social
identities and ranks. Some, especially those in United States and Eu
ropean studies, go further and argue that modernity itself occurs at
the moment when consumption becomes a widely dispersed, socially
accepted, and morally-proper form of economic behavior and charac
teristic of social differentiation. Modernity is also marked by the rise
of mass consumerism, and by its ascendancy of the consumer over the
producer. In sum, in their view, we are not what we make but what
we eat, wear, and use.
Convinced of the centrality of consumption to the making of the
modem world and of its essentiality to modem identity, consumptionists
have expended enormous energies uncovering patterns of consumption
in the past. For example, they have combed probate inventories, hold
ing that the nature and the quantity of the goods possessed capture the
structure, hierarchy, and mobility of a society. Hence, in one study, a
scholar examined three thousand probate inventories in England, 1660-
1760, to determine the kinds of goods being purchased and the chang
ing pattern of their usage over time. At this early date, she concluded,
people possessed ever-greater quantities and varieties of goods, in
order to mark themselves apart-that is, for purposes of social differ
entiation. Thus, a consumer revolution and the modern era already
had begun by ca. 1700.2
1