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Title: Imperial Legacy by L. Carl Brown, Benjamin R. Gampel ISBN: 0-231-10305-0 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Imperial Legacy
Comment: "In the Valhalla of past empires, the Ottomans should rank high. In actual fact few major political systems have been so consistently ignored or misrepresented." Imperial Legacy represents an attempt to right this wrong by assessing the Ottoman legacy many decades after its passing in those lands where the padishah once ruled; the editor dubs it "a collection of briefs for the court of history."
The results can hardly be gainsaid. In chapters on one arena after another-state boundaries, administration, diplomacy, the Arabic and Turkish languages, economics, military matters, Islam, and education-the authors show the wide, sometimes pervasive, impact of Ottoman institutions and practices. This hardly comes as a surprise, given that the empire lasted over six hundred years, but the point does emphatically need making, and a luminary cast (Halil Inalcýk, Charles Issawi, Geoffrey Lewis, Bernard Lewis, André Raymond, Dankwart Rustow) effectively does so.
Brown, professor emeritus at Princeton University, has emerged in the last decade as the Middle East's historian with the widest vision. His International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game (Princeton University Press, 1984) is a path-breaking effort to find patterns in diplomacy over the past two centuries; and a multi-authored volume (co-edited with Cyril E. Black), Modernization in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire and Its Afro-Asian Successors (Darwin Press, 1993) ambitiously seeks to interpret the whole of modern Middle Eastern history.
Middle East Quarterly, June 1996
Rating: 4
Summary: Very timely, scientific, relevant and looks beyond cliches.
Comment: Imperial Legacy, composing of various chapters contributed by numerous Ottoman experts, sheds light, especially for non-academicians, on the legacy of a great empire and its imprint on current Middle East, Balkan, Caucases and North Africa geopolitics, culture, religion and daily life. Most revealing is how the Ottoman history is not synonomous with Turkish history. Rather, it is a history of a particular dynasty, and the history of the peoples, of numerous religious, ethnic and racial background it ruled over centuries. It is a history of Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Serbs, Albanians, and many others. In an effort to distance themselves from the Ottoman past, which was the anti-thesis of that most powerful 19th century invention of nation-state, all nations that have emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire have very diligently and actively ignored or denied the Ottoman heritage. Most zealous among them was the new Republic of Turkey of course. In many cases the legacy is very tangible and measurable, like the current political and ethnic borders of lands that directly or indirectly, at some time or another, came under Ottoman rule. In other cases, it is intangible but very omnipresent, like very centralized governments, elite bureaucrats, lack of noble classes, administrative traditions, obsession with internal peace at any cost etc.. In other cases, the legacy is there by its absence, like lack of strong free markets, industrial and technological underdevelopment. It is a delicate matter though at times to seperate the pre-Ottoman traditions that Ottomans absorbed and carried over from Byzantine and Seljuk empires, or very regional characterisitcs that can not be attributed to Ottomans solely, from the true and unique imprints of the Ottoman Empire. The various facets of the legacy is investigated at some depth, albeit very unevenly in each chapter. While Maria Todorova dives into phlisophy and theory of history in the 4th Chapter on Balkans, Norman Itzkowitz gives a very superficial treatment in Chapter 3. Present day perceptions, impact on Arab world and Balkans, administarative and diplomatic heritage, language, education, economics and cultural legacies have been specifically treated with adequate references. The militray subject was very lightly covered given its enourmous significance for the Ottomans. The imprint on the modern Turkish history and how the young Turks, CUP and CHP and their struggles with opposing forces play out and shape politics in Turkey even today, does not get the focus it obviously deserves. Two other areas left out of the picture were music and architecture. They do fall a little out of the area of expertise of the historians contributing to the book but still, Classical Turkish Music is a very living part of the Ottoman legacy. It exists solely because of the imperial heritage, and it has been refined over the centuries by very significant contributions from non-Turks and non-muslims alike. There are experts who could have been called on to fill these gaps. In short, a very timely and relevant book. A topic that was very difficult to treat objectively due to the prejudice and heavy emotions surrounding the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and its disasterous end, has been bravely and squarely faced. It promises to be a very rich area of investigation and research in the future too.
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Title: The Ottoman Turks : Introductory History to 1923, An by Justin McCarthy ISBN: 0582256550 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 04 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $41.00 |
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Title: The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe by Daniel Goffman, William Beik, T. C. W. Blanning ISBN: 0521459087 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 25 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 by Donald Quataert, William Beik, T. C. W. Blanning ISBN: 0521633605 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 13 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State by Cemal Kafadar ISBN: 0520206002 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach (4th Edition) by Dale F. Eickelman ISBN: 0130336785 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 03 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $45.33 |
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