When the War Came Home: The Ottomans' Great War and the Devastation of an Empire by Yiğit Akın (review)

The Great War came home in the late summer of 1914. The inhabitants of Istanbul, Izmir, Aleppo, and the smallest of Ottoman villages all felt it coming. At times it made itself known by creeping slowly into the every day, and at other times it appeared with great fanfare, violently disrupting normalcy. In a matter of months, the Ottoman state mobilized hundreds of thousands of civilians, emptying fields, stores, and homes of their men. The state froze bank accounts, requisitioned grain, confiscated livestock, and censored the press. These violent state interventions were "shrouded in an all-encompassing discourse of duty (vazife)." In time, the state's mandated "sacrifice" (fedarkalık) grew to unimaginable proportions (95). No war had ever demanded such extraordinary tributes. In fact, "by the end of the war virtually every family, village, and neighborhood would be touched by [the war's] terrible effects" (9). Despite the war's extensive reach and the fact that European historians long have considered the home-front experience to be an essential aspect of the "total war," it took professional Ottoman historians a hundred years and a centenary to acknowledge the importance of the war's civilian dimension.

Instructed by nationalist histories and deterred by the taboo of a genocidal past, Ottoman historians have avoided, if not obscured, the wartime story of families, villages, and neighborhoods across the Empire. Akın's When the War Came Home is an important historical revision that fully portrays the imperial home front for the first time. Moreover, this unique interdisciplinary work reconsiders existing temporal, geographical, and methodological approaches to the study of World War I in the Middle East.

Expanding the temporal scope, When the War Came Home foregrounds the Balkan Wars' (1912–1913) importance in shaping the Ottoman home-front experience between 1914 and 1918. Akın argues that the Ottoman defeat exposed the Empire's political and military weakness, its diplomatic isolation, and its ethnic groups' growing demands for reform. Raising "the specter of imperial collapse," the Balkan debacle generated an existential crisis among the Ottoman leadership. The fear of a repeat failure led not only to total mobilization but also to plans aimed at eradicating all possible threats to the survival of the Empire. Both these policies resulted in suffering, violence, and displacement beginning in 1914 (9).

When the War Came Home is the first comprehensive history of what we might call an Ottoman home front. Sensitive to the differential experiences of Ottoman subjects mediated by gender, class, ethnicity, and religion, Akın skillfully integrates the vast geographical scope of the Empire into his narrative guiding his readers into urban and rural spaces and across provincial boundaries. His archival depth and analysis is impressive, showcasing his grounding in historical method. A combination of state correspondence, national and international newspapers, petitions, folklore, and lamentations paint an intimate picture of how Ottoman subjects experienced living at the "limits of the possible" (9). Herein, the voices of Akın's rich archive claim their position in the war's history like never before—from Ihsan Bey's skeptical reaction to the mobilization in the eastern Anatolian city of Harput, the U.S. consul's reports of inadequate provisioning of the Mesopotamian divisions, and the laments of Bethlehem's women as they saw their men conscripted to collect garbage (52, 86, 91).

Akın's interdisciplinary approach is most notable in his attention to gender and mass migration. Drawing on works from the field of gender studies, he creatively combines Turkish laments and folklore with women's petitions to the central government. The sources, which reveal the deep resentment and sorrows of those affected, leave no doubt that the war "altered the circumstances of Ottoman women beyond all recognition" (145). Countless middle- and lower-class urban women entered the workforce. Forced by wartime deprivations and...