The writing of the history of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1922, has changed dramatically during the past several decades. In the early 1970s, when I began my graduate studies, a handful of scholars, at a very few elite schools, studied and wrote on this extraordinary empire, with roots in the Byzantine, Turkish, Islamic, and Renaissance political and cultural traditions. Nowadays, by contrast, Ottoman history appropriately is becoming an integral part of the curriculum at scores of colleges and universities, public and private.
And yet, semester after semester I have been faced with the same dilemma when making textbook assignments for my undergraduate courses in Middle East and Ottoman history. Either use textbooks that were too detailed for most students or adopt briefer studies that were deeply flawed, mainly by their a-historical approach that described a non-changing empire, hopelessly corrupt and backward, awaiting rescue or a merciful death.
This textbook is an effort to make Ottoman history intelligible, and exciting, to the university undergraduate student and the general reader. I make liberal use of my own previous research. Moreover, I rely quite heavily on the research of others and seek to bring to the general reader the wonderful specialized research that until now largely has remained inaccessible. At the end of each chapter are lists of suggested readings, not always those used in preparing the section. Given the intended audience, only English-language works are cited (with just a few exceptions). These works, however, each contain substantial bibliographies in many languages that can provide a springboard for further reading. To gain an overview of Ottoman history writing today, examine an annual bibliography, named Turcology Annual,1 that lists hundreds of books and articles – in languages as diverse as English, Japanese, Arabic, French, Russian, Turkish, Spanish, German, Chinese, and Armenian. The bibliography is an indispensable source.
I have tried to give what I believe is a more widely comprehensive presentation – including not only political history, but social, economic, and labor history as well. Too often the state has been overemphasized in Ottoman history writing. In part this is because the sources from which the history is written are those produced by the state itself. This text seeks to give agency to groups in the “civil society,” outside the government. Despite my effort to more equally weight the various aspects of the Ottoman experience, there are numerous gaps, a function of both space limitations and my own shortcomings. In preparing this second edition, I continue to underrepresent the field of cultural studies, mainly for fear of not doing it justice. Also, my original treatment of the religious classes, both the Muslim ulema and the Jewish and Christian clergy, also remains basically unrevised. In the end, I concluded that a fuller treatment of these groups would require comparably specialized treatments of various other important elements in Ottoman society such as merchants, soldiers, and artisans and that such analyses belong to a specialized monograph and not a general text. Slavery remains largely excluded. There is, however, some mounting evidence that the issue of economic slavery may need revisiting. Such slavery was not widespread and domestic slavery did dominate; but some slaves were working in manufacture and agriculture and their activities may require further discussion at a later point. In this regard, I also mention the possibly connected presence of Africans in the northern Ottoman Empire during, for example, the nineteenth century.
Some of the revisions seek to correct errors that generously were called to my attention by reviewers or in private correspondence – to both sets of individuals I am very grateful. Most of the changes result from my readings of the literature published since the first section or rethinking points of interpretation.
A caution: the Ottoman experiences were rich, diverse, and sometimes unusual. But they were not sui generis, one of a kind. We can understand them by using the same categories of analysis that historians employ to examine states and societies in Ming China, Tokugawa Japan, the Habsburg Empire, and Victorian England. I believe that Ottoman institutions and peoples were particularly fashioned by a special set of historical contingencies. But so too, political and social organizations across the globe each were uniquely fashioned by their own sets of contingencies. When appropriate, I have underscored the unique qualities of the Ottoman experience. But throughout, I also have sought to present the process of change in the Ottoman world as sharing much with those of states, societies, and economies elsewhere. That is, common patterns are to be expected and, within those, we find the Ottoman particularities formed by specific contingencies.
The first chapter situates Ottoman history in a larger context and its role in the evolution of western Europe. The following three chapters, 2–4, are chronological surveys of the period before 1683, the eighteenth century, and the 1800–1922 era. Chapters 5–10 are thematic in nature, exploring various major issues: international and domestic politics; the economy; society, and popular culture; identity; and the question of inter-subject relations. The final chapter explores the resonance of the Ottoman past in the experiences of people living in the more than thirty states that exist on the lands once Ottoman.
In preparing the first edition of this book, numerous friends and colleagues have offered invaluable guidance that I usually welcomed but sometimes rejected. Thus, errors and misjudgments are my responsibility. Colleagues at Binghamton University and especially the world history group – including Rifaat Abou-El-Haj, John Chaffee, Brendan McConville, Tiffany Patterson, and Jean Quataert – have changed the way I think about history. I also wish to thank Elif Akşıt, Lynda Carroll, Eric Crahan, Kasım Kopuz, Thomas Page, and Margarita Poutouridou for reading earlier versions of this manuscript. Faruk Tabak was exceptionally helpful and read two, quite different, drafts of the text; his comments were very useful. The biennial conferences on Ottoman history at Binghamton University have served as a powerful learning device for me. For various specific points, I thank Virginia Aksan, Selçuk Esenbel, Carter Findley, Heath Lowry, Nancy Micklewright, Zafer Toprak, as well as Andreas Tietze. For their criticisms and comments on the published first edition, I especially thank Carter Findley, Fred Lawson, Viorel Panaite, Christine Philliou, Michael Quataert, and Yunus Uğur. More generally, I have found the discussions on H-Turk to be very useful.
1Turcology Annual/Turkologischer Anzeiger, published at the Institut für Orientalistik der Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria