Market-making strategies in Tanzimat era Istanbul: The quest for an elusive cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Focusing on a pivotal period of the Ottoman Empire, we illustrate how advertising tactics act as market-making tools for local and non-local businesses during the Tanzimat (1839–1876) (Re-organization) era through a study of advertisements in the popular Armeno-Turkish daily newspaper Manzume-i Efkâr. We show that using standardised marketing communications in both form and content to invoke Westernness, forging dealership networks to induce demand, and legitimising the products and brands acted as market-making mechanisms and helped to introduce new products into the local market. Our findings further illuminate that although the market making efforts of the era might suggest the existence of a multilingual, ethnically, and culturally diverse consumer group, the adverts only speak to a limited and inorganically bound set of consumers.