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Between Two Empires: Ahmet Agaoglu and the New Turkey

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Ahmet Agaoglu, a native of Azerbaijan, who would play an important role in the development of modern Turkish nationalism, is the subject of this tightly focused intellectual biography. For students of the Caucasus at the end of the Russian Empire or of the development of Turkish nationalism, Holly Shissler's carefully researched work holds a wealth of important information and insights.

Yet Shissler's contribution goes far beyond this in two ways. First, her introductory chapter offers one of the best historiographical overviews of trends within the study of Turkish nationalism that I have seen. Second her work acts as a corrective to the tendency in the study of nationalism to concentrate on the formulation of identity which actually wins out in the end. Through her careful tracing of Agaoglu's intellectual development, she shows how fluid national identities were in this period, and how subject to changing political realities.

For students of the late Ottoman Empire, Turkish nationalism, and the late Caucasus, this is an important contribution. Given the care with which it has been written, it is likely to remain an important work within the field for decades to come.