~ TRADE AND FOREIGNERS ~
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who had not necessarily achieved a really elevated status, received quantities of silk fabric through the ruler’s bounty. Here again we may think in terms of the entitlement of dignitaries to valuable goods. When the sultan’s palace was to be supplied, even long-distance trade was regulated more closely than was true in other contexts. It has been suggested that administratively decreed prices, of which detailed lists were published particularly in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Istanbul, were enforced with special strictness when state authorities were the purchasers. Apparently more latitude was allowed to the merchant when dealing with ordinary customers.124 The owners of goods required by the ruler might be asked to offer them at special prices as a sign of their devotion, and in certain sixteenth-century cases, special court traders visited Russia or even England in order to make their purchases directly ‘at source’. Unfortunately we know nothing about their manner of doing business.125 Differently from the courtly and state elites, the Ottoman administration saw no particular need to protect the demand of well-to-do but ‘ordinary’ urbanites with respect to good-quality woollen cloaks, watches or painted Indian fabrics. Quite to the contrary, attempts on the part of such wealthy members of the subject population to use consumption as a means of asserting status were the targets of numerous anti-luxury rescripts. A tendency toward marking social status through elaborate consumption was especially noticeable during the first half of the eighteenth century, and was tolerated or even promoted as long as it occurred in a courtly context. But when contemporary merchants enriched through a burgeoning trade attempted to show their wealth through conspicuous consumption, a ‘crackdown’ in the shape of renewed anti-luxury laws was the result.126 As is true of such regulations the world over, sultanic rescripts limiting consumption were not usually easy to enforce, and we may assume that Ottoman officials were as much aware of this fact as we are today. Quite possibly, by allowing longdistance merchants to charge what the market would bear, the Ottoman government quite effectively enforced sumptuary legislation among the less wealthy potential claimants to elevated social status. But there were other reasons that might impel the Ottoman state to curtail foreign trade. These were linked to the problem of conserving bullion, regarded as an essential possession of any ruler preparing for war. Although the Ottoman state, at least in the eighteenth century, may have been a bad paymaster, silver and gold were needed to pay for soldiers and supplies. Without silver coin, no mercenaries could be hired, and from the seventeenth century onwards, these men were seen as absolutely essential. Moreover, in the course of the seventeenth century, most silver mines on Ottoman territory, already limited in number, were given up, as high costs of production made them uneconomic compared to their Peruvian and Mexican competitors.127 But at the same time, from the late sixteenth century onwards a dramatic shortage of silver induced the Ottoman government to embark upon a long series of currency devaluations, which caused a good deal of socio-political upheaval and may have contributed towards a