This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West.
The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans' multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe's heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans' remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The Ottomans pioneered religious toleration even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples. But in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empire's demise after the First World War.
The Ottomans vividly reveals the dynasty's full history and its enduring impact on Europe and the world.
This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West.
The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans' multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe's heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans' remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The Ottomans pioneered religious toleration even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples. But in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empire's demise after the First World War.
The Ottomans vividly reveals the dynasty's full history and its enduring impact on Europe and the world.
Marc David Baer is professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of five books, including Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe, which won the Albert Hourani Prize. He lives in London.
"A wildly ambitious and entertainingly lurid history."--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
"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
"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
"Magnificent... [An] important and hugely readable book -- a model
of well-written, accessible scholarship."--Financial Times
"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
"Sweeping... Baer's elegantly written narrative is full of bloody
state building...along with intriguing, counterintuitive takes on
Ottoman culture."--Publishers Weekly
"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
"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
"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
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