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This is one of the Longman "Modern Wars In Perspective" series, and if the other books in the series are a good as this one, the military historian should buy them all. One learns something on every page. Even the fact that the Ottomans never considered themselves Turks -- that name was given them by Europeans until the Ottomans finally recognized it in the 19th Century and used in order to more closely identify the dynasty with its subjects. In many respects this volume is Volume Three to my two-volume set of Turkish History by Knolls which only goes to 1704. However, this new volume clearly eclipses Knolls' work.
This period is worth several long volumes, and author Aksan has done an incredible job in boiling it down to a little over 500 pages. For much of the time covered by the author, the Ottomans were treated somewhat dismissively by European monarchs, and became know to American students in their classrooms as "The Sick Man In Europe." The military men in the Balkins that fought the Ottomans, however, maintained a somewhat different attitude.
Warfare between the Balkan Christians and the Muslim Ottomans was brutal in the extreme and totally without mercy. The frontier repeatedly exploded in murder, rape, torture, slavery, and human degradation of the most extreme kind. Yet the people on both sides soldiered on in wars without end. Lands were depopulated and turned into wasteland, then re-populated and developed only to be destroyed again a few years later. Such was the cycle of life on the Ottoman-Balkan border.
Given such a subject it is remarkable that the author has produced such a compelling read. This she accomplishes by the skilful mixing of campaigns with individual accounts, informative descriptions of people, institutions, armies, courts and governments, and personalities and actions of the major players. I found this book to be difficult to put down.
Although the Austrians and the Russians were the principal adversaries, the Ottomans also had to deal with Serbian revolts and the Greek rebellion of 1821-27 that resulted in Greek independence. And, of course, every historian knows about the elimination of the recalcitrant Janassaries in by Mahmud II in 1826. The Ottomans were forced to confront revolts fairly regularly throughout their empire during this period; in Constantinople (Istanbul (a corruption of the Greek "eis teen polin" or "into the city") became the name of the city only in 1924 after the expulsion of the Ottoman ruling family & became official in 1927), among the Kurds, the Wahabis in Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro. Even Napoleon got into the action with his invasion of Egypt, and the subsequent French campaign into the Holy Land and Syria. This was an empire constantly at war with short intervals of peace to prepare for the next war.
The various sultans (there were 13 from 1700 to 1885) attempted various reforms in the Ottoman system with varying success. Maintenance of the army was constantly a severe problem, and when the new model army was disasterously defeated by the Egyptians at Nizib in 1839, the Ottomans practically went on life support. Yet the Ottomans showed amazing resilience, re-grouping and reforming in spite of the mishandling and alienation of his subjects by the Sultans. It becomes a fascinating account of defeat, resurgence, misrule and reform. The author weaves her way through all of this with clear and precise prose, somehow always maintaining the interest of the reader.
For anyone wishing to learn something of the pre-20th century history of the primary Middle Eastern Power, this book is it. Among other things, it shows that there was little to no fertile ground for democracy to form in the Middle East, and the legacies of the Ottoman Empire continue today. This is an important book for Americans to understand what the Ottomans were experiencing while the United States progressed from British colonies, through its revolution, the Civil War, mastery of its land mass from the Atlantic to the Pacific and growth into a world power.
This book is highly recommended.
- Paperback: 620 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (April 28, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 9780582308077
- ISBN-13: 978-0582308077
- ASIN: 0582308070
- Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.4 x 9.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Customer Reviews: 4 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#511,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1477 in Russian History (Books)
- #275 in Turkey History (Books)
- #1160 in Military History (Books)
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