Customer Reviews

A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Admittedly this book is written for a narrow audience; to Hanioglu's credit he neither talks over the heads of readers, nor does he water-down the material. The book is at once informative, detailed, richly cited drawing from an abundance of primary sources, and discusses not only the political decline of the Ottoman Empire, but also the social, economic and intellectual components of its last two centuries.

The introduction provided an excellent summary of the politically untenable situation the Ottoman Empire found itself: as the nation states of Europe were beginning to assert themselves and the technological fruits of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution were beginning to ripen, the Ottoman leadership recognized its place in the sun was slipping. The remaining 200 pages discusses in elaborate detail with crystal clarity the myriad attempts made by successive Sultans to modernize and save the Empire. In a nutshell, these efforts failed because of equal parts internal resistance (from the Janisaries, the ulama, from regional powers) and external interference (Britain in particular does not come off very well.) I was especially impressed with the way in which complex inter-relationships (between social / economic classes, internal politics and international policies, international trade, intellecutal challenges and policies aimed at reforming and modernizing) were broken down into digestible pieces, their connections clearly stated, and the long-term results shown. This is no easy feat.

I do regret that more attention was not given the final decade of the Ottoman Empire: the emergence of the Young Turks, the Second Constitutional Period, and the partitioning of the empire among Britain and France. For those seeking a detailed and accessable history of the attempts at reforming the Ottoman Empire, this is the most authoritative and detailed text on the subject to date.

This book is an excellent summary of nineteenth century Ottoman History. The author relies entirely on primary material which he assembles masterfully. The book deals with political, social, cultural, and economic aspects of the Ottoman Empire, and offers fresh insights. The book presents well-balanced views, supported by solid evidence and sound interpretation, even in the most controversial aspects of the late Ottoman history. For a historian, non-historian, or anyone interested in the history of Ottoman Empire, Turkey, or Middle East, this is a great read and a reference book. I recommend it highly.

The main event dates back a century, the revolt of the Young Turks, and the chosen time covers almost two and a half centuries, the late Ottoman Empire. Surveying its history, Princeton's scholar M. Sükrü Hanioglu proposes a new approach how to integrate the knowledge of multiple subfields into a more general framework. Before his method and conclusions are touched here, a word about the contents. Finally follow two thoughts.

M. Sükrü Hanioglu, who became well known also by his book on the "Young Turks In Opposition" (Oxford 1995), outlines six chapters between introduction and conclusion for events from 1798 to 1918. At first he deals with the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the nineteenth century. Then he discusses in the next two parts the initial Ottoman responses to the challenge of modernity and the dawn of the reform age. The remaining three parts shed light on the Tanzimat era, the Hamidian regime and the longest decade of the late Ottoman Empire from revolution to imperial collapse. Hanioglu's tips for further reading in major European languages are very helpful as well as the bibliography and index.

Regarding narrative and methods, the author emphasizes historical trends and processes more than single events. This makes his book an outstanding and interesting read for the students and general public. Solidly based on the author's gleaning of major imperial and other archives and on his rich insights into the Afro-Asian and European history, his aim is not the usual happiness of a historian about dozens of more details in the great Ottoman mosaic. Rather he walks a golden path on ridges in the hilly landscapes filled with valleys of details.

Hanioglu underscores four principal dimensions. In the first one he uses the paradigm of the old fight between the imperial drive to centralize and a variety of centrifugal forces. Thus, he enables the reader to compare with other multiethnic empires like the Austro-Hungarian, the British and the Russian Empire. Second, he concentrates on the struggle between center and periphery. True, the reader who is now more used to the paradigm of globalization, might ask here if the Arabian Peninsula was a semi-periphery. Or how the paradigm of center and periphery fits into concepts of historical regions which allow us to visualize the trends on local, regional, national, and global levels. The reader will find the center-periphery approach enlightening for it appeals to the classical narrative of empires.

Third, the author avoids the "worn-out paradigms of modernization and Westernization" (3). Instead, he tries to write in terms of the Ottoman response to challenges brought on by the onset of modernity. He has a point: the Ottoman state was not unique in adapting to modernity. Though its task was perhaps more arduous than that of European states, if only the modernity was initially a European phenomenon. Having said this, he opens yet a rear window for that paradigm since there is no way getting around of all the different attempts for an Ottoman and Turkish Europeanization as kind of Westernization. Finally, M. Sükrü Hanioglu portrays the Ottoman history as an integral part of the larger histories of Europe and the world. Therefore, he shows no fear of reviving an out-of-fashion area: diplomatic history. In his case, as historian of the Near East, he is excellently equipped to work in his multiple regional languages with fine tuned tools in a wide range of methods.

Now regarding the conclusions. The author notes that it was Muhammad Ali of Egypt as an example where the periphery tried to impose the modernization to the center. Two decades later, in 1839, roles were reversed. Not everything in the fight of centripetal and centrifugal forces was related to nationalism. The author draws a dynamic picture also for Ottoman reactions to modernity. Since the empire began its journey later than most of its European counterparts, it had to rely more on imitation and importation. Europeanization was a kind of Westernization. So he refuses simple notions like a struggle of modernizers against reactionaries. The author shows: it was even for (Pan-)Islamists more complex.

A fundamental dynamic of the late Ottoman history leads to the great role of the old-style diplomacy in mitigating foreign influence over domestic developments. The Ottomans succeeded to deflect European demands only to a limited degree. Thus, Hanioglu says, "the domestic policy in the late Ottoman Empire was related to foreign policy to an extent unparalleled before" (205): it was the state's relations with European powers that provided the initial and sustaining impetus for reforms aiming at centralization and modernization. In other words, it was an outward determined, though inward guided process of change. Its major impetus came from the Ottoman military since old armies were of no use on the battle fields against the ever growing might of the Europeans.

According to the author the Eastern Question was like a chameleon changing its colors with the environment. Indeed, this book refreshes greatly the further discussion. First, we can distinguish four phases of that question as a result of the: Ottoman's rise; their short equal stance with others about 1774; their decline and their collapse. All Ottoman phases had regional versions. The fourth one for instance grew also to a domestic and a foreign Middle Eastern Question: which Arab tribe would fight the Ottomans to leave the empire by allying with which foreign power? And from the outside: which European rival would support whom and inherit which parts of the falling empire in Southern Europe, North Africa and West Asia? Similar points were risen by other major ethnic groups like the Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Kurds, and some Iranians. Today grows an European inversion out of the Eastern Question that moves some restless Muslim spririts still as minorities of Europe: with whom to ally at the Islamic center in the Middle East, at the Western semi-periphery of the Americas and at the densely populated Islamic periphery of Africa and Asia?

Second, Middle East historians share the notion that there was in Europe and around the Ottomans a "balance of power." Was there ever one or rather a "dynamic imbalance of power?" With the latter as paradigm, change and instability can be better explained. Also Germans and Ottomans shared a "feeling of being surrounded." As count Hermann von Schlieffen stressed: "unprotected in the middle, surrounded by walls and trenches of the others." Otto von Bismarck spoke of three potential warfronts and the need for coalitions to avoid them. By establishing a power sufficient to oppose her potential three foes all together, Germany provoked each one of them alone into viewing her power as too great. So an arms race among the four, plus economic instabilities, generated a steady dynamic imbalance of power. As Ottomans modernized, they slipped in a similar situation, though not of might but weakness. Ottomans pitched others against each other. So the German-Ottoman pact (175) in the Great War came from Turkish entreaties and German designs. [1]

Hanioglu's seminal work presents a true spring of ideas not only for the late Ottoman history but also for the search of some earlier East Roman and Byzantine interplays of structures and identities.

Link: [...]

An astonishingly well written informative book. Hanioglu gives us an inside view of the tensions between the centralized power of the Sultanate and that of the periphery. Superficially there was one law and one template for governance howeve large distances, poor lines of communication, local politics and customs lead to vast differences in implementation. In most cases, after the local warlords had taken their cut, taxation remittances flowed from the periphery to the centre - the exception being the region of Mecca where tribute flowed the other way in order to maintain the support of the Sherifians and confer legitimacy on the Sultan as Calif as he was not a descendant of Mohammed.

Militarily from the late 1700s on Turkey had done poorly in its military engagements with Russia and turned towards Europe both for allies and for guidance in modernizing its armed forces. These changes are resented by the Janissaries and Sultan Selim III is slain in a coup in 1807. Selim's cousin Mahmud II is installed as his replacement and he manages a conservative rule for the next 3 decades. In this period there is also an interesting description of British ambassador Stratford Canning from 1810 to 1858, known as "the little Sultan", who was said to have wielded more influence than most Grand Viziers and foreign ministers.

In Egypt Mehmed Ali (an Albanian) amasses a large army and suppresses a Wahabist revolt in Arabia (1811-18) and the Greek rebellion (1824-27) and establishes a powerbase, nominally subservient to the empire. In 1832 he pushes further east into Palestine and Mahmud resorts to an alliance both with Russia to restore the status quo in return a promise to close the Bosphorus to Russia's adversaries in the event of war. Mahmud was not entirely successful as the net result was that Ali controlled the Egypt, the Sudan, Crete, Syria and Jeddah in Arabia. (pp66). In 1939 the Porte turns to an alliance with Britain and Austria to push Ali back in return for reduced taxation (capitulations). Its an intriguing turning point and my complaint here is that the coverage is too brief.

In order to reflect changing interests among the various classes Hanioglu takes the interesting approach of looking at the titles of personal libraries and notes a shift from mostly religious texts in the 19th century to secular and foreign books by the early 20th. He also examines the statement of personal effects in people's wills - thus tracking which objects different segments of society thought important enough to accumulate and pass on to others.

After the Crimean War the Tanzimat reformation, in part forced on the Ottomans by the European Powers, in part driven by the sentiment of the times towards modernization, moved the empire towards equal rights for minorities, resulting in gradual attempts to establish civil courts, land reform and the abolition the jizya tax against non-Muslim minorities. The image of the empire was shifting from a collection of religious and ethnic millets under the protection (per the "Pact of Umar") of a Muslim majority to that of an Ottoman citizen. The reforms were not easily accepted, even by Christians who in Greece mourned that "the state has made us equal with the Jews. We were satisfied with Muslim superiority." (pp76). Yet the modernization impulse seems to have taken hold, both in changes of styles of dress, uniform and in popular taste where the phrase "alla Franca" indicating progressiveness was touted over "alla Turca" which symbolized being old fashioned.

The Young Turk revolution of 1908 (Ch 5 & 6), possibly inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1905/06, was based largely of Muslims from Salonica allied with key elements of the military reduced the Sultanate to a figurehead. While the elections of 1908 were considered to be fair, Hanioglu compares its rule and subsequent elections to be the equivalent of a one party "people's republic" similar to that of Mexico's Pardido Revolucionaro Institucional. (pp161) However in the West the empire's influence continued to fade. European immigration, trade, imperialism and administration reduced the connection to Istanbul to one in name only and revolution in Greece and the Balkans chipped away at much of the rest.

The final chapter examines the reasons for the Empire's involvement in WW I. Initially neutral Turkey might have remained so or allied itself with either side. The reasons it did not are largely viewed as a reaction to debt, a wish to free itself from the capitulations and a desire to prevent the dissolution of its remaining territories.

As excellent as Hanioglu's account is there are 3 areas could be improved on. When discussing the various power estates of the Ottoman Empire he mentions the Porte, the army and the ulemas (religious class) but leaves out the role of the various guilds (ref: Bernard Lewis) that controlled the economic reigns and in many cases impeded progress. A second problem is that the coverage of the massacres of the Armenians in the late 19th century and the Armenian genocide itself (not to mention the ethnic cleansing of other Christian groups) is treated as a blip rather than as massive rendering of an age old social contract. Even though I can understand the potential reasons, I was disappointed. Lastly the author could have supplied some additional maps, particularly in in the earlier section of the book to show the changes in divisions of the provinces and also with regard to conquests of Mehmed Ali.

In spite of these problems IMHO a rating of 5 is an understatement. I'd consider this essential reading for the history of the 19th century, the breakup of the empire and the formation of of the modern middle east. It does help to have some previous background as the amount of detail is a bit overwhelming, however if you are interested in a particular set of years each chapter stands well as a separate unit. Highly, highly, highly recommended!

This is a fascinating book on late Ottoman history, I recommend it to everybody who are both new to the subject and experts in the field.

I wasted my money on a so-called scientific book which deals with the Armenian Genocide on half a page, portraying Krikor Zohrab in a photo without commentary. Being a christian Armenian parliamentarian, Krikor Zohrab was a progressive writer, excellent lawyer and defender of universal human rights. He was savagely murdered in a group of six other Armenian intellectuals by the Young Turkish government. The author Shükrü Hanioglu does not dare to name what happened. To use Krikor Zohrab's picture among others and ommitting important facts is a shame.
But most striking is the low quality with which the author deals with the Armenian Genocide on twenty rows for 1 1/2 m deaths. One could expect the less is written about a matter the higher accuracy is attended by the author. - But again, his dealing with "the members of the Armenian-Apostolic Church living in and around the war zone" is outdated. Completely outdated - and intelligible finding out what other genocide denialists and revisionists are lecturing at the same faculty! Well done!