Surviving Elite Replacement

Phanar is a neighborhood in Istanbul.

Phanariots were mercantile descendants of Byzantine nobility that took on roles as administrators and diplomats for the Ottoman Empire.

This is one of the ways people survive elite replacement: making yourself indispensable through specialized knowledge.

The others are:

• translation, a bridge between the conquered and the conquerors

• those with ability to make capital flow

• those who can reinterpret ideological or religious frameworks to favor new powers

• those with military capability

• those who can bolster the identities of emerging elites

• those who can shift allegiances at the right time