This work focuses upon the military problems of the Ottoman Empire in the era 1839 to 1878. The author examines the Crimean War (1853 to 1856) from the perspective of the Ottoman army, using British and French sources, as well as the few available Ottoman materials. Scholarship on the war has ignored this aspect, but the high quality of work about the British, French, and Russian involvement in the war has enabled the present study to advance its own work. The inability of the Ottoman high command to learn the lessons of the Crimean War led to serious defeats in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Revolts occurring in this period also receive attention. While the book analyzes the nature of war in the Balkans and Anatolia, its primary objective is the study of the war's social and psychological influences. This perspective runs as a theme throughout the book, but the author focuses on the psychological aspects in the final chapter using comparative perspectives. .

In 1807 the reformist Sultan Selim III was overthrown in a palace coup enacted by the elite special forces of the day-the Janissaries. The Ottomans were bankrupt and had been forced to make peace with Napoleon after Austerlitz, but it was Selim III's efforts to reform an empire that had suffered successive military defeats, and to reform along the lines of modern principles-with an end to the privileged 'feudal' position of many in elite Ottoman civil-military society-which sealed his fate. This book seeks to situate Turkey's reactionary revolutions of 1807 into a wider European context, that of the French Revolution and the outbreaks of revolutionary activity in the German states, Britain and the US. The Ottoman Empire was an interconnected and crucial part of this early-modern world, and therefore, Aysel Yildiz argues, must be analyzed in relation to its European rivals. Focusing on the uprising, and the socio-economic and political conditions which caused it, this book re-orientates Ottoman history towards Western Europe, and re-situates the late-Ottoman Empire as a key battle-ground of political ideas in the modern era.

To what extent did a perceived morality crisis play a role in the dramatic events of the last years of the Ottoman Empire? Beginning in the late nineteenth century when some of the Ottoman elites began to question the moral climate as evidence for the losses facing the empire, this book shows that during the course of World War I many social, economic, and political problems were translated into a discourse of moral decline, ultimately making morality a contested space between rival ideologies, identities, and intellectual currents. Examining the primary journals and printed sources that represented the various constituencies of the period, it fills important gaps in the scholarship of the Ottoman experience of World War I and the origins of Islamism and secularism in Turkey, and is essential reading for social and intellectual historians of the late Ottoman Empire.

The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire explores the serious and far-reaching impacts of Little Ice Age climate fluctuations in Ottoman lands. This study demonstrates how imperial systems of provisioning and settlement that defined Ottoman power in the 1500s came unraveled in the face of ecological pressures and extreme cold and drought, leading to the outbreak of the destructive Celali Rebellion (1595–1610). This rebellion marked a turning point in Ottoman fortunes, as a combination of ongoing Little Ice Age climate events, nomad incursions and rural disorder postponed Ottoman recovery over the following century, with enduring impacts on the region's population, land use and economy.

The Ottoman Scramble for Africa is the first book to tell the story of the Ottoman Empire's expansionist efforts during the age of high imperialism. Following key representatives of the sultan on their travels across Europe, Africa, and Arabia at the close of the nineteenth century, it takes the reader from Istanbul to Berlin, from Benghazi to Lake Chad Basin to the Hijaz, and then back to Istanbul. It turns the spotlight on the Ottoman Empire's expansionist strategies in Africa and its increasingly vulnerable African and Arabian frontiers. Drawing on previously untapped Ottoman archival evidence, Mostafa Minawi examines how the Ottoman participation in the Conference of Berlin and involvement in an aggressive competition for colonial possessions in Africa were part of a self-reimagining of this once powerful global empire. In so doing, Minawi redefines the parameters of agency in late-nineteenth-century colonialism to include the Ottoman Empire and turns the typical framework of a European colonizer and a non-European colonized on its head. Most importantly, Minawi offers a radical revision of nineteenth-century Middle East history by providing a counternarrative to the "Sick Man of Europe" trope, challenging the idea that the Ottomans were passive observers of the great European powers' negotiations over solutions to the so-called Eastern Question.

Living in the Ottoman Realm brings the Ottoman Empire to life in all of its ethnic, religious, linguistic, and geographic diversity. The contributors explore the development and transformation of identity over the long span of the empire's existence. They offer engaging accounts of individuals, groups, and communities by drawing on a rich array of primary sources, some available in English translation for the first time. These materials are examined with new methodological approaches to gain a deeper understanding of what it meant to be Ottoman. Designed for use as a course text, each chapter includes study questions and suggestions for further reading.

Although much has been written on international crises, the literature suffers from a lack of historical depth, and a proliferation of competing theoretical frameworks. Through case studies drawing on the rich historical experience of crisis diplomacy, James Richardson offers an integrated analysis based on a critical assessment of the main theoretical approaches. Due weight is given to systemic and structural factors, but also to the specific historical factors of each case, and to theories which do not presuppose rationality as well as those which do. Crisis diplomacy the major political choices made by decision makers, and their strategies, judgments and misjudgments - is found to play a crucial role in each of the case studies. This broad historical inquiry is especially timely when the ending of the Cold War has removed the settled parameters within which the superpowers conducted their crisis diplomacy.