The rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire’s religiously inspired status symbols

Abstract

How do status symbols rise and fall? Or better said, how does a status symbol become a status symbol and then cease to be one? We examine the rise and the fall of the Ottoman Empire’s two socialization practices with the international society as status symbols: sending and receiving envoys/establishing permanent representation abroad and granting capitulations/extraterritoriality—economic and legal privileges to primarily European countries. We argue and illustrate that status symbols are products of hegemons of the time that dictate the status symbols of the international order at that particular point in time, with little or no recognition. These symbols emanating from the position that the states occupy in the hierarchy can be status-enhancing rather than status-achieving if these states perceive and locate themselves in the higher echelons of the hierarchy in the international order. We contribute to status-seeking literature by examining the rise and fall of status symbols in a non-Western setting and merging ideational and material factors in status-seeking literature.