Although the study of material culture is a well-established field, there have been few books in English that examine southeastern Europe, and most of those have focused on individual nation-states. It is therefore refreshing to have a volume that looks at material culture throughout the region and with a focus on the period that covers the end of Ottoman rule and the emergence of the modern Balkan states. This volume brings together some of the leading researchers of the region and serves as a valuable addendum to works examining material culture in the Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman states, like those by Donald Quataert, Suraiya Faroqhi, or Haris Exertzoglou.
The introduction by Constanţa Vintilă-Ghiţulescu lays out the objective of the volume, which is to offer new approaches to the history of women as well as the social history of consumption in southeastern Europe. Vintilă-Ghiţulescu also provides useful context for those not familiar with the region and briefly mentions some of the debates regarding modernity and its links to consumption in the Balkans.
The first chapter by Giulia Calvi discusses knowledge transmission through the circulation of books between Istanbul, Paris, and Milan focusing on the works of Ignatius Mouradgea d‘Ohsson (an Ottoman dragoman who published a history of the Ottoman Empire in French) and Giulio Ferrario (who used that history in his own encyclopedic work). In this well-illustrated chapter, the author convincingly argues that d'Ohsson acted, in part through Ferrario, as a cultural broker between the Ottoman world and Europe, inserting a rare anti-Orientalist element.
The second chapter by David Celetti and the sixth chapter by Anastasia Falierou examine cultural exchanges in Istanbul in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively. Celetti focuses on the role of women as intermediaries between the Ottoman world and French residents of the Levant, while Falierou examines fashion consumption in the context of intercommunal relations. Celetti argues that relations between French men and Christian Ottoman women forged a new society and culture. Falierou, on the other hand, discusses the transformative nature of clothing during the Tanzimat and the effect of the spread of western fashion on the relations between different ethnoreligious communities in Ottoman society. Falierou points out the differences between male and female sartorial changes, the role of dress style as a marker of westernization, and the confusion with regards to women's costumes that sometimes combined elements of traditional and European styles. Falierou also makes a very important observation regarding the significance of men as transmitters of the knowledge of new fashions through their presence in new places of sociability, the significance of which is also mentioned by Celetti.
In the third chapter, Katarina Nina Simončič examines fashion in eighteenth-century Dalmatia. Although not part of the Ottoman Empire, Dalmatia was on the crossroads between the Ottoman and European worlds and trade was often in the hands of Ottoman merchants. The author focuses on fabrics, especially lace, not only in connection to fashion but also in terms of manufacture. Simončič deftly uses a variety of sources that include some surviving artifacts as well as contemporary portraits and travel accounts woven together to show changes in fashion and influences. This use of multiple source material is also present in Artemis Yagou's fourth chapter, which examines Greek bourgeois women of the eighteenth century and the role of luxury and fashion as a process of Europeanization. Yagou argues that the use and consumption of objects of value by Greek middle-class women “operated as markers of an identity in the making” (117).
A similar argument is made by Vintilă-Ghiţulescu in the fifth chapter, which examines fashion and consumption in what became Romania from 1780 to 1850, noting a shift from Ottoman to European luxury goods. She too uses a mélange of sources to link individual liberty, the emerging identity of the modern state and consumption habits that she argues weakened social and gender barriers. Of particular interest is the author's discussion of the political role of clothing, in sartorial legislation but also in the deliberate flouting of such laws as political statements. Romania is also the focus of the seventh chapter by Nicoleta Roman whose focus is the role of women in merchant family strategies. Roman discusses marital strategies which allowed outsiders to join mercantile networks in the provinces but also the significance of women as temporary substitutes for absent men (especially widows), as in her case study of the entrepreneur Safta Castrișoaia.
The final chapter by Evguenia Davidova is arguably the most intriguing. Davidova examines female travel and education as consumption and as women's role in the adoption of European ideas. She argues that mobility offered new ways of constructing gender and class identities with divergent consumption traits and behaviors often exposing generational cultural gaps. For Davidova, female dress acted as a symbol of modernity but also as a challenge to the patriarchal order and traditional economy. Skillfully incorporating the consumption of education in her argument, Davidova argues that mobile female teachers used education as a vehicle to undermine such institutions as the dowry and became agents of change to children and their parents. This exposed them to severe criticism from traditionalists but also to praise for their role in nationalist projects.
Unavoidably like most edited works, the quality of the chapters of this volume is uneven and it has certain gaps (Serbia, Albania, non-elites). A more serious concern is that few of the authors problematize national designations (Greek, Croatian, Romanian) at a time when such identities were far from solidified, and most uncritically accept the idea that Europeanization equaled progress for women in the region. Nevertheless, this volume begins to fill an important void in the study of southeastern Europe in terms of gender and material culture, and several chapters like those by Davidova or Falierou provide valuable insights and point to some very interesting avenues for further research.
