The Ottomans 1700–1923

Reviewed by: The Ottomans 1700–1923: An Empire Besiegedby Virginia Aksan Ozan Ozavci Virginia Aksan. The Ottomans 1700–1923: An Empire Besieged, Second. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. Xxvii + 400 pp. Paperback, $48.95. ISBN: 9781138923249. Virginia Aksan's new book, The Ottomans 1700–1923: An Empire Besieged, is an extended second edition of her much-admired Ottoman Wars, 1700–1870. The new edition covers a period bracketed between what Ali Yaycıoğlu has recently termed the "Karlowitz moment" of the Ottoman Empire and the [End Page 373]Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 that paved the way for the foundation of a new republic in Turkey. It adds three new chapters and an epilogue to the original version. Aksan's book is, first and foremost, a military history. Its main focus is on the wars the Ottomans fought; the sultans' armies and their constant, even if not unhindered, transformation; and the political, diplomatic, economic, financial, social, cultural, and religious underpinnings of these transformations. "Empires rise and fall in violence," Aksan writes at the very outset, "[n]ations too, arise from empires mired in violence and turn those catastrophes into national myths" (1). In the pages that follow, she tells the long, complex, even tumultuous story of how an empire fell through wars and misgovernment in the age of an inhospitable global imperial order and, in the end, by means of nationalist backlashes. She explains the manifold processes through which new nations (Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian, etc.) emerged out of the once Ottoman world, also foregrounding the story of peoples—their hopes and the episodes of communal violence they endured at various scales. Aksan's book portrays, on the one hand, the big picture: how, for instance, "the pomp, the circumstance, the distance, and the extraordinary setting were all part of the Ottoman performance of empire" (27); or who an Ottoman was and what it meant from the 1870s onwards. At the same time, a commendable wealth of detail, fun and not-so-fun facts, ranging from the impressions of western women travellers in the Ottoman world to the demographics of the Ottoman imperial armies or the amount of losses incurred during the wars, fill the pages of her impressive book. The complex story of late Ottoman history is told with the aid of information boxes that offer biographical portraits of historical figures that range from the French foreign minister Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, to Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, as well as explanations on less-known military units like the bashibozuks. At the end of each chapter, we find recommendations for further reading, references to digital sources, and special studies produced by top scholars in the field. This well-thought-out book starts with a chronology of key events and ends with a glossary to help readers navigate their way more easily amidst the pages in between. This is a uniquely rich book, divided into four parts and ten chapters including the epilogue. Its first part investigates the Ottoman world before the nineteenth century. It introduces the reader to the Ottoman imperial system, its troubled encounters with the Habsburgs and the Romanovs, as well as the "collapse" of the empire as it experienced heavy defeats and punitive treaties beginning with the 1768–74 Russo-Ottoman war. As Aksan tells us, "the military organizations and leadership gap between the Ottomans and their imperial [End Page 374]rivals was real; a problem that would become increasingly apparent with the outbreak of war in 1768" (59). Part II, "The Revolutionary Moment," considers the reigns of Selim III and Mahmud II, the two Ottoman sultans that reigned through the Napoleonic Wars and undertook substantial military reforms against the fickle alliances and the deeply insecure international order of the time. According to Aksan, "the period of 1800–1840 was a do-or-die moment for the Ottoman dynasty, hardly the time to introduce liberalism or constitutionalism" (75). Aksan's discussion of Selim III's reforms in the 1790s and the 1800s, Mahmud II's endeavours to establish his authority over the Ottoman ayansin the late 1800s and the 1810s, and the Serbian rebellion provides wonderful examples of how extremely complex issues can

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