Virginia H. Aksan

Ottoman Political Writing, 1768–1808

The Ottomans, after a long period of peace that began in 1740, declared war on Russia in 1768, disputing territory essential to the continued existence of the empire: Moldavia, Wallachia, the Crimea, and Georgia. The war lasted until 1774, during which time the Ottomans proved that they no longer posed a military threat to Europe. The signing of the Kucuk Kaynarca treaty of 1774, which granted Tatar independence in the Crimea, was the first instance of an Ottoman cession of a predominantly Muslim territory to a European power, and it provoked an internal crisis and long debate over the future of the empire. The Ottoman administration, especially the scribal bureaucracy, contributed a number of political advice manuals to the debate, which form the core of the following discussion. Four examples have been selected with the purpose of extending the analysis of Ottoman advice literature into the 18th century and testing the assumption of Ottoman inability to accommodate changing political realities.

An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi, 1700-1783

This study of the life and milieu of a statesman, utilizing a wide array of hitherto unused chronicle and documentary material, offers new insights into many aspects of Ottoman eighteenth-century society. Subjects touched upon include career development and patronage in the central bureaucracy, increasing knowledge and interest in European diplomacy, and the impact of war on traditional attitudes. Of particular interest is the section on the 1768-74 Russo-Turkish War, a traumatic awakening for the Ottomans, who yielded significant territory, but were also faced with the necessity of reconstructing a polity and ideology which no longer produced results on the battlefield. Ahmed Resmi was the first of a new generation of statesmen who saw real virtue in the rationalization of war and the need for peace within prescribed borders.

War and peace

Introduction Writing the history of Ottoman warfare and diplomacy from 1603 to 1838 is charting much unknown territory, and combating long-held assumptions about Ottoman obscurantism, paralysis and obstinacy in the face of defeat, shrinking borders and European incursion. In many ways, the era can be characterised by a slow, imperceptible tilting towards European-style diplomacy, as Ottoman bureaucrats came to terms with fixed borders and the potential power and sometimes debilitating limitations of negotiations, what J. C. Hurewitz long ago called ‘the Europeanization of Ottoman diplomacy’. The eighteenth century, in particular, saw a hundredfold increase in the use of diplomatic initiatives, including the sending of special envoys to Europe, increasing emphasis on foreign affairs in the bureaucracy, establishing permanent embassies in Europe in the latter part of the period under study, and the sometimes adroit, sometimes maladroit manipulation of the large and unruly European diplomatic community in Istanbul. Ottoman warfare is not as easy to characterise, as studies of so many of the major campaigns of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and of the 1800s as well, for that matter) have yet to be undertaken from the Ottoman point of view, a striking lacuna for an empire whose single raison d’etre is almost invariably described in military terms. Much of the debate on military reform, or lack of it, in the Ottoman context has been influenced by western European historiography, which pits rational and progressive against religious and regressive societies, accounting for the spectacular success of the West and, by-the-by for the failure of the Ottomans to make the transition to a modern-style army.

The Ottoman mobilization of manpower in the First World War: between voluntarism and resistance

Basé sur des sources officielles et non officielles principalement, turques mais aussi britanniques dans une moindre mesure (1), ce livre examine l’ensemble du processus de mobilisation (seferberlik) dans l’Empire ottoman pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, lequel est engagé sur quatre fronts principaux : celui des Dardanelles, celui du Caucase, ceux de Sinaï-Palestine et de Mésopotamie. Cette mobilisation est comprise dans l’ouvrage non comme une expérience de guerre en général, du recrutement à la préparation économique, financière, technologique et culturelle, mais elle se restreint à « l’implication des ressources humaines pour la guerre » (p. 19). L’auteur limite également son objet d’étude non seulement à la région anatolienne, mais aussi aux populations musulmanes, qui constituent la base de l’État-nation turc d’aujourd’hui. Car bien que le système de conscription gagne en universalité, les musulmans d’Anatolie forment en grande majorité les forces armées ottomanes. Ce sont par ailleurs ces populations qui sont ciblées par les politiques de l’État ottoman et qui, à leur tour, par leur acceptation ou au contraire leur résistance, influencent l’État dans l’évolution de son système de conscription. La guerre impose en effet un renforcement du contrôle sur la société, mais elle ouvre également de nouveaux espaces de dialogue et de collaboration pour les acteurs sociaux. Ainsi, en s’inscrivant dans le champ de l’histoire sociale, l’auteur questionne la façon dont la mobilisation permanente modifie les relations entre État et société en Anatolie et s’interroge sur ses effets, eu égard à la centralisation étatique, l’autoritarisme et le nationalisme. Cet ouvrage en anglais comble un vrai manque de travaux sur la période de la fin de l’Empire ottoman ; il est particulièrement novateur, dans le sens où il vise à une autonomisation du champ des études sur la Première Guerre mondiale dans l’Empire ottoman et tente de rééquilibrer le paysage

The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans. From Global Imperial Power to Absolutist States

Mehmet Sinan Birdal. The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans. From Global Imperial Power to Absolutist States. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011. Pp. xii. 211.‘Big things come in small packages...

Review Article: Finding the Way Back to the Ottoman Empire

KEMAL H. KARPAT, ed. Ottoman Past and Todays Turkey. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Pp. xxii, 306.

N UR B ILGE C RISS , Istanbul under Allied Occupation 1918–1923 , Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage: Politics, Society and Economy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999). Pp. 195.

99.00 (us); DOUGLAS A. HOWARD. The History of Turkey. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001. Pp. xxii, 241.

62.00 cloth.

35.00 (us); MARTIN SICKER. The Islamic World in Decline: From the Treaty of Karlowitz to the Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Westport: Praeger, 2001. Pp. x, 249.

Ottoman Wars, 1700-1870: An Empire Besieged

67.50 (us); DIETRICH JUNG with WOLFANGO PICCOLI. Turkey at the Crossroads: Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East. London: Zed Books, 2001. Pp. vii, 231. £49.95; JAMES J. REID. Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse, 1839-1878. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000. Pp. 517. €85.00; KEMAL H. KARPAT. The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. ix, 553.

Locating the Ottomans Among Early Modern Empires

49.95 (us).