Publishers Weekly
08/30/2021
The Ottoman Empire was surprisingly tolerant and modern, according to this sweeping chronicle. Historian Baer (Honored by the Glory of Islam) recaps the Empire’s rise—at its 17th-century peak it ruled most of the Middle East and southeastern Europe—and long decline within a larger European context, emphasizing its entwinement with European geopolitics and culture and its seething intellectual and religious currents, which paralleled the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. He also highlights its innovative multiculturalism and social engineering. The Ottomans’ Muslim-dominated society incorporated Christians, Jews, and ethnic minorities respectfully, Baer notes, until a 20th-century turn to Turkish ethno-nationalism precipitated the Armenian genocide, and its early system of converting Christian slave children to Islam and training them for the military and governmental posts produced a meritocratic army and administration. Baer’s elegantly written narrative is full of bloody state building—a new sultan was expected to murder his brothers to keep them from challenging him for the throne—along with intriguing, counterintuitive takes on Ottoman culture. He claims, for instance, that the sultan’s fabled harem was an epicenter of female political empowerment, and that sexual relations between men and boys were de rigueur among elites. This immersive study makes the Ottomans seem less exotic but more fascinating. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
This forceful history takes aim at the notion that the Ottomans represent the antithesis of Western Europe, asking readers ‘to conceptualise a Europe that is not merely Christian.’”—New Yorker
“Mr. Baer organizes his material according to contemporary concerns…thereby eking out surprisingly fresh insights from this hitherto well-plowed terrain… Highly readable, original and thorough.”—Wall Street Journal
“Highly readable... Baer’s fine book gives a panoramic and thought-provoking account of over half a millennium of Ottoman and — it now goes without saying — European history.”—Guardian
"Magnificent… [An] important and hugely readable book — a model of well-written, accessible scholarship."
—Financial Times
“Baer offers a fuller, fresher view of the dynasty that ruled an empire for 500 years and helped shape the West as much as the Habsburgs or Romanovs… A major achievement. [Baer] is a writer in full command of his subject.”—Spectator
“A winning portrait of seven centuries of empire, teeming with life and colour, human interest and oddity, cruelty and oppression mixed with pleasure, benevolence and great artistic beauty.”—Sunday Times
“A wildly ambitious and entertainingly lurid history."—Times
“Sweeping… Baer’s elegantly written narrative is full of bloody state building…along with intriguing, counterintuitive takes on Ottoman culture.”
—Publishers Weekly
“There’s no study more masterful than Baer’s on the lengthy rule of the Ottoman Empire…Baer is especially skilled at presenting extensive information in an engaging and accessible way.”—Library Journal
“A book as sweeping, colorful, and rich in extraordinary characters as the empire which it describes.”—Tom Holland, author of Dominion
“A compellingly readable account of one of the great world empires from its origins in thirteenth century to modern times. Drawing on contemporary Turkish and European sources, Marc David Baer situates the Ottomans squarely at the overlap of European and Middle Eastern history. Blending the sacred and the profane, the social and the political, the sublime and the absurd, Baer brings his subject to life in rich vignettes. An outstanding book.”—Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans
“A superb, gripping, and refreshing new history—finely written and filled with fascinating characters and analysis—that places the dynasty where it belongs: at the center of European history.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs
“Marc David Baer’s colorful, readable book is informed by all the newest research on his massive subject. In showing how an epic of universal empire, conquest and toleration turned into the drama of nationalism, crisis, and genocide, he gives us not only an expansive history of the Ottomans, but an expanded history of Europe.”—James McDougall, University of Oxford
“Marc David Baer’s The Ottomans is a scintillating and brilliantly panoramic account of the history of the Ottoman empire, from its genesis to its dissolution. Baer provides a clear and engaging account of the dynastic and high politics of the empire, whilst also surveying the Ottoman world’s social, cultural, intellectual and economic development. What emerges is an Ottoman Empire that was a direct product of and an active participant in both European and global history. It challenges and transforms how we think of ‘East’ and ‘West,’ ‘Enlightenment,’ and ‘modernity,’ and directly confronts the horrors as well as the achievements of Ottoman rule.” —Peter Sarris, University of Cambridge
Library Journal
★ 08/01/2021
In his latest book, Baer (history, London Sch. of Economics; Honored by the Glory of Islam) expertly captures the undercurrents of Ottoman history that he says made the empire's rule perilous at times: the recurring threat (at least, in the empire's view) posed by dervish sects and the emergence of the Jewish messiah Sabbatai Zevi in the 17th century; the influence of Janissaries on imperial policy; and the eventual immuring of the sultan in his palace and his removal from active governance. The most useful insight Baer offers is that historians do the Ottomans a disservice by treating them as a non-European "Other." In their glory days, the emperors in fact saw themselves as inheritors of Western tradition, Baer writes, and they governed a population that was at least one-third Rum (Roman). Baer effectively explains that the winds of unrest that swept the West in the 17th century swept the East as well, so Western historians do no service to history by slighting the commonalities between Western nation-states and the Ottomans. VERDICT There's no study more masterful than Baer's on the lengthy rule of the Ottoman Empire, from its founding in the 13th century to its collapse in 1924. Baer is especially skilled at presenting extensive information in an engaging and accessible way.—David Keymer, Cleveland
