Tracing a host of important and exciting topics relating to consumption, this book describes and analyzes the rise of mass fashion dress, changing fashions in clothing, the transcultural significance of tulip consumption, the rise of print advertising, the use of food as a marker of elite status, and the emergence of photographs as a consumer commodity. The emphasis on consumption rather than production offers new perspectives on the Ottoman and Middle East past, and by extension that of East and Southeast Asia as well as Africa. Its findings also invite comparisons with those in U.S. and European consumption history. Also included are chapters that offer guidance in the use of archival sources for research in consumption history and a methodological overview of the utility of consumption studies for Ottoman and Middle East history.

Contributors include Tulay Artan, Suraiya Faroqhi, Elizabeth B. Frierson, Charlotte Jirousek, Joyce Hedda Matthews, Nancy Micklewright, Donald Quataert, Ariel Salzmann, and Madeline C. Zilfi.