Ambiguous symbols

The first stamp designs were self-consciously Ottoman, clothing a new western innovation with a distinctly Ottoman aesthetic, expressing a cultural tension never to be wholly resolved.

By the time that the first Ottoman stamps were issued, the Empire was well down the road of decline. Quite apart from the reckless spending of borrowed money on the Dolmebarche Palace (completed in 1856), the Crimean War had strained the Ottoman treasury, leading it towards further European loans and eventual bankruptcy. Rivalries amongst the European powers kept the Empire intact, but even so the Ottomans were to lose virtually all their European and African territories by 1914.

Against this background, the first Ottoman postage stamps with their self-consciously revivalist Ottoman aesthetic were ambiguous symbols. Were they signs of progress and modernisation? Or did they symbolise the Empire’s helpless absorption into the periphery of a world market dominated by the West?

1856 Dolmabahçe Palace. Cost 35 tonnes of gold, an enormous burden on the state purse during the Tanzimat era.