Living the Good Life Consumption in the Qing and Ottoman Empires of the Eighteenth Century

591 Pages·2020·6.15 MB·English

Living the Good Life

Rulers & Elites

Comparative Studies in Governance

Series Editor

Jeroen Duindam (Leiden University)

Editorial Board

Maaike van Berkel (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Yingcong Dai (William Paterson University, nj)
Jean-Pascal Daloz (University of Strasbourg)
Jos Gommans (Leiden University)
Jérôme Kerlouégan (University of Oxford)
Dariusz Kołodziejczyk (Warsaw University)
Metin Kunt (Sabancı University)

VOLUME 13

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rule

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Living the Good Life

Consumption in the Qing and Ottoman Empires
of the Eighteenth Century

Edited by

Elif Akçetin
Suraiya Faroqhi

Cover illustrations: Otto Magnus Freiherr von Stackelberg, Trachten und Gebräuche der Neugriechen (1831),
Tafel VII. Courtesy of the Staatsbibliothek München.

Wang Yuanqi et al., comps., Wanshou shengdian chuji, 120 juan (Peking: Nei fu, Kangxi 55 [1716]), juan 42, 43a.
Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Library.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2017034653

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.

issn 2211-4610
isbn 978-90-04-34938-4 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-35345-9 (e-book)

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Contents

Preface ix
List of Figures and Tables xii
Notes on Editors and Contributors xv

Introduction 1
Elif Akçetin and Suraiya Faroqhi

1 Setting the Stage 38
Elif Akçetin and Suraiya Faroqhi

PART 1
Dead Grandees and Their Inventories

2 Elite Objects and Private Collections in Eighteenth-Century China:
A Study of Chen Huizu’s Confiscated Goods 61
Yun Yan

3 Ali Paşa and His Stuff: An Ottoman Household in Istanbul and Van 90
Amanda Phillips

4 Cutting a Fine Figure among Pots and Pans: Aghas of the Sultan’s Harem
in the Eighteenth Century 113
Yıldız Yılmaz

5 Challenging the Paradigm of the Tulip Age: The Consumer Behavior of
Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Paşa and His Household 134
Selim Karahasanoğlu

PART 2
Urban Life: Generating a Self-Image through Textiles, Pictures,
and Buildings

6 Furnishing the Home in Qing Yangzhou: A Case for Rethinking
“Consumer Constraint” 163
Antonia Finnane

vi
Contents

7
A Preliminary Study of Local Consumption in the Qianlong Reign
(1736–1796): The Case of Ba County in Sichuan Province 187
Wu Jen-shu and Wang Dagang

8
Women, Wealth and Textiles in 1730s Bursa 213
Suraiya Faroqhi

9
Consuming Luxurious and Exotic Goods in Damascus around

1700 236
Colette Establet

PART 3
Food Culture

10
From Artichoke to Corn: New Fruits and Vegetables in the Istanbul
Market (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries) 259
Arif Bilgin

11
Food and China’s World of Goods in the Long Eighteenth
Century 283
Joanna Waley-Cohen

12
Of Feasts and Feudatories: The Politics of Commensal Consumption
at the Early Kangxi Court 307
Michael G. Chang

PART 4
Materials: Precious and Modest, Luxuries and Necessities

13
Brass Consumption in the Qing Empire 333
Lai Hui-min and Su Te-Cheng

14
Consumption as Knowledge: Pawnbrokers in Qing China
Appraise Furs 357
Elif Akçetin

vii
Contents

15
Consuming and Possessing Things on Paper: Examples from Late
Imperial China’s Natural Studies 384
Martina Siebert

16
Diamonds Are a Vizier’s Best Friends or: Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa’s
Jewelry Assets 409
Hedda Reindl-Kiel

17
Of Bricks and Tiles: The History of a Local Industry in the Area of
Mürefte (Thrace) 433
Edhem Eldem

Conclusion 474
Elif Akçetin and Suraiya Faroqhi

Chinese Character Glossary 493
Bibliography 507
Index 563

Preface

This volume is the outcome of a rather long and complicated itinerary. At the
end of the last century, the late Donald Quataert organized a conference on
Ottoman consumption out of which he later generated a volume, the first-
ever collection of studies to explicitly focus on Ottoman consumption.1 After
2007, when one of the present co-editors had begun to work at Istanbul Bilgi
University, she was able to hold several conferences on the history of Ottoman
consumption, the first of which Don Quataert attended before passing away in
2011. Cooperation with Giorgio Riello and Anne Gerritsen (Warwick University,
UK), then involved with their own project concerning material culture world-
wide generated the notion that in the second volume on Ottoman consump-
tion, we should place the relevant practices face to face with comparable
activities in another culture, preferably a non-Western one. After all, in an
era where “world history” is taught in schools and colleges all over the pla-
net, the time has surely come to take an interest in centers of production and
consumption outside of Europe and the—in the eighteenth century—newly
emergent United States. Given the importance of consumer goods “made in
China,” especially the porcelain cups much favored by better-off Ottoman cof-
fee aficionados, it thus seemed most appropriate to bring together studies of
Ottoman and Chinese consumption.
Moreover, as we both are working on the early modern period with a strong
commitment to the eighteenth century, we were attracted to this period
perhaps because of our déformation professionelle. Moreover, for less subjec-
tive reasons as well, this seemed a “good” period on which to focus. After all,
on the Ottoman side, registers kept by the scribes of local qadis, which sur-
vive in significant numbers from about 1550 onwards, by about 1700 are avai-
lable for quite a few major towns. As for the estate inventories of deceased
persons often contained in these registers, which are a major source for the
history of Ottoman material culture, they also are reasonably numerous for
this period. Furthermore, the relatively low incidence of war between 1718 and
1768 allowed many Ottoman manufactures to expand, or at least recover from
the desolation that the wars of the late 1600s and early 1700s had occasioned
(1683–1699, 1714–1718).
As for the Chinese side, for a considerable time, historians assumed that
consumption had been reasonably widespread under the Ming dynasty (1368–

1 Donald Quataert, ed., Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550–1922:
An Introduction (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000).

x
Preface

1644) but declined under the Qing (1644–1911/12). However, recent scholarship
has shown that at least during the 1700s, before rebellions and the wars with
Great Britain and France over the illegal importation of opium slowed down
the expansion of manufactures and trade, there was a flourishing culture of
commerce and consumption. The numerous literary texts published in the
1700s documenting this florescence—and the attendant connoisseurship—
further encouraged the two of us to focus on the eighteenth century in the
Chinese case as well.
Once we had decided that this was a promising route to take, we needed to
find people willing to embark on the journey along with us. We were fortunate
enough that a group of international scholars established in Australia, China,
France, Germany, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States, each working on one
or other aspect of consumption and material culture, and highly knowled-
geable of the subject and the sources, enthusiastically agreed to join the pro-
ject. We thank them for their contributions and for their patience throughout
the preparation of this volume.
As consumption studies are a relative novelty in both the Qing and Ottoman
worlds, putting together an edited book on the subject was sometimes an
arduous task. It would have been even more difficult had it not been for the
fact that among middle-class publics both in Turkey and in China, there is a
certain amount of interest in the imperial culture of the past. This “nostal-
gia culture” has often found expression in the production of historical soap
operas on the Qing and Ottoman empires, which continue to glue millions of
viewers to their television and computer screens, as well as in museum exhibi-
tions where the material worlds of the emperors and courtiers are presented
to publics all around the world. Restaurateurs have also participated in this
“nostalgia culture” by recreating the “traditional” dishes of imperial cuisine.
As a result of this booming memory culture, over the years we have had the
chance to study many of the objects described in the current book in museums
in Athens, Beijing, Berlin, Chicago, Corfu, Istanbul, London, Paris, and Taibei.
Furthermore, one of the present co-editors has been able to make contact with
scholars working on the history of food and with cooks, who in Istanbul, study
written sources and material objects used in the preparation of food.
Partly due to the works of Anne Gerritsen, Giorgio Riello, Maxine Berg, and
Pippa Lacey, we have also become aware that it makes good sense to explore
social relations as established around certain materials and objects, from paper
and brass to diamonds and roof-tiles. As this approach is still not very familiar
to historians concerned with the Ottoman world, we have had to be somewhat
flexible when it came to the “borders” of the eighteenth century. When putting
together the section on “Materials,” we just could not afford to take the reign