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 Living the Good Life Consumption in the Qing and Ottoman Empires of the Eighteenth Century Edited by Elif Akçetin Suraiya Faroqhi LEIDEN | BOSTON 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. 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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 Contents vii 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