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Reviewed by:
  • The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire
  • Donald Quataert
The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire. Edited by Virginia H. AksanDaniel Goffman (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007) 376 pp. $80.00 cloth $27.99 paper

Ottoman history is alive and well, as attested by the proliferation of scholarship over the past four decades (and the appearance of this edited volume). Inspired by the opening of the Ottoman state archives located in present-day Turkey and led by a pioneering generation of scholars adept in the languages and crabbed scribblings of imperial scribes, Ottoman history writing gained new impetus with the fall of the Soviet Union. Searches for the keys to empire in general and to understanding the current state of southeastern Europe in particular have brought invigorated attention to this field of study. A number of survey textbooks now entice general readers while many lacunae are disappearing under the impact of new research.

The volume under review falls into the category of new research, focusing on the early modern era, which it raggedly defines as between the later sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It consists of twelve contributions by a varied, competent cohort; a non-exhaustive list of topics includes Ottoman politics and diplomacy and military, cartographic, legal, and cultural history. Generally, the authors share the ongoing revisionist impulse in Ottoman history writing, viewing the Ottoman Empire within the context of world history and the body of premodern states that possess a variety of common characteristics. For them, the Ottoman Empire is no sui generis, exotic oddity but a state and society with its own features as well as others that it shares with its contemporaries across the globe.

The individual chapters are all worthy, and many offer stimulating assessments. Collectively, however, the work suffers from the usual defect of an edited volume—the lack of unifying themes, beyond the commitment [End Page 313] to revisionism. The two historiographical inquiries by Douglas A. Howard and Baki Tezcan sparkle in their originality, offering fresh insights into how and why historical writing changed in the early modern era. Leslie Peirce’s study of “the material world” is a fine overview for both generalists and specialist. Edhem Eldem examines epitaphs in Ottoman cemeteries to learn about the social ambitions and manners of the living, and Shirine Hamadeh gives an international comparison of imperial gardens and their evolving use as public places.

Donald Quataert
State University of New York, Binghamton
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