Armed Forces of the Ottoman Empire (Military History)

Introduction
The Ottoman Empire (c. 1300–1918) ruled over most of the territories of what is now known as the Middle East. The Ottomans were a Muslim dynasty (the house of Osman) that governed multireligious and multiethnic populations from the steppes of Russia to the Balkans and the Arabian Peninsula as well as Egypt, North Africa, the Levant, and Turkey from the 1300s to 1918. The Ottoman difference lies in its creation of a ruling class of any and all who would convert and join the sultan’s household. The military power of the dynasty was based initially on the assignment of military fiefs (timars) to a warrior class known as sipahis and the creation of a unique slave military infantry known as the Janissaries (new troops), who have been recognized as the first disciplined standing army of Europe. This combined cavalry and infantry power spread rapidly and absorbed and assimilated Byzantine lands and institutions. It twice fought its way to the gates of Vienna, the second time in 1683 when a coalition of European monarchs turned the tide in favor of Christendom. The date 1683 has ever since served as one of the great turning points of civilization in having come to represent the moment when the Turk was definitively turned back from the gates of Europe. The defeat led to a century of crisis and introspection on the part of the Ottomans, further disastrous defeats, and the gradual realization that the power of the once formidable Janissaries had inexorably weakened. Over the next century and a half, the entire premise of Ottoman rule, structured on patrimonial rule and sultanic largesse, would be altered in the struggle for survival. The results of that struggle included the decentralization of state revenues, the building of local paramilitary armies, and the blurring of the traditional categories of warrior (askeri) and peasant (reaya) classes. In addition, the period saw the creation of wealthy state officials who engineered (or resisted), largely from the 1790s to the 1830s, the destruction of the traditional armed forces and the creation of a new European-style disciplined, regimental force based on conscription of the Muslim population. The political contract that emerged in the era known as the Tanzimat period (1839–1877) constituted an Ottoman-style constitutional monarchy pledging equality of citizenship and taxation before the law even to non-Muslims, who had previously been tolerated as zimmi (people of the book) and excluded from military service. Despite such achievements, economic mismanagement, Christian and Muslim sectarianism, and continuous military pressure from Russia, coupled with empire-wide nationalist movements, led to further crushing defeats and the rise of a militarized and racialized Turkish nationalism in the Young Turks movement. More specifically, the Committee of Union and Progress, which relied on Prussian financing and know-how to reorganize and arm the military at the turn of the 19th century, entered World War I on the side of Germany in 1915, and collapsed into ashes along with the monarchies of Russia and Austria-Hungary at the end of that war in 1918.
General Overviews to 1683
Ottoman historians Finkel 1988, Murphey 1999, Ostapchuk 2001, and Ágoston 2005, along with colleagues Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (see under Dávid and Fodor 2007), constructed much early work on Ottoman warfare, and the authors of these works are responsible for setting the standard. One of the better explanations for the military failure at Vienna is found in Stoye 2006. Gradeva 2001 offers a glimpse of what the Habsburg-Ottoman border towns may have looked like. The collections in Tallett and Trim 2010 and Dávid and Fodor 2007 include a number of articles on the nature of war and society on the frontiers where the empires of the Ottomans, Habsburgs, and Romanovs met.
Ágoston, Gabor. Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
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An archival examination of Ottoman gunpowder manufacture, Ágoston’s work demonstrates Ottoman self-sufficiency in the production of gunpowder well into the 17th century, although not necessarily mastery of the evolving technology involving its manufacture.
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Dávid, Géza, and Pál Fodor, eds. Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders, Early Fifteenth–Early Eighteenth Century. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004157040.i-256Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Of particular interest in this volume are the articles by Géza Palffy, “Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman-Hungarian Frontier in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” (pp. 35–82), which discusses the extent of the enterprise in military labor, and Klára Hegyi, “Freed Slaves as Soldiers in the Ottoman Fortresses in Hungary” (pp. 85–91), which offers examples of the options facing Christian prisoners of war. Available as an e-book. See also Pál Fodor and Géza Dávid, Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Conquest (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2000).
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Finkel, Caroline. The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606. Vienna: WVGÖ, 1988.
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An in-depth account of the provisioning capabilities of the Ottoman army in the long war that ended with the Treaty of Zitvatorok.
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Gradeva, Rossitsa. “War and Peace along the Danube: Vidin at the End of the Seventeenth Century.” Oriente Moderno 20.1 (2001): 149–175.
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One of a very few articles that examines the impact of warfare on the borders of the empire.
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Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700. London: University College Press, 1999.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203166024Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A truly microcosmic look at the workings of the pre-reform Ottoman military, Murphey’s intimate knowledge of the Ottoman archives is on display in discussing topics such as camel loads, provisioning, distances the army had to march, and practices on the march and in camp.
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Ostapchuk, Victor. “The Human Landscape of the Ottoman Black Sea in the Face of the Cossack Naval Raids.” Oriente Moderno 20.1 (2001): 23–95.
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Ostapchuk’s knowledge of northern Black Sea Tatar and Cossack culture of the 17th century is without parallel.
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Stoye, John. The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial between Cross and Crescent. New York: Pegasus, 2006.
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This work is a reprint of the 1964 edition published in Edinburgh by Birlinn Press. Stoye’s evocation of the period is without equal in English. His knowledge of the terrain and of international relations surrounding the Ottomans prior to the 18th century is unparalleled.
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Tallett, Frank, and D. J. B. Trim, eds. European Warfare, 1350–1750. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511806278Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This exceptional collection includes two articles on the Ottomans: Gábor Ágoston, “Empires and Warfare in East-Central Europe, 1550–1770: The Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry and Military Transformation” (pp. 110–134), which privileges the Habsburgs; and Rhoads Murphey, “Ottoman Military Organisation in South-Eastern Europe, c. 1428–1720 (pp. 135–158), which argues for the ability of the Ottomans to sustain successful siege warfare into the later 17th century,
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General Overviews from 1683 to 1918
Military history post-1683 has largely been written from the point of view of a presumed Ottoman makeover of its society through the lens of secularization and Westernization, which privileges the borrowing of Western military technology and the development of constitutionalism over an indigenous understanding of warfare and its impact on the imperial project. Shaw 1971 on Selim III was the single work in English on the military transformation per se for almost two decades. Aksan 2007, Fahmy 1997, Heinzelmann 2004, Moreau 2007, and Yılmaz 2009 have produced volumes on the transformation that took place from 1683 to the1830s. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky 2002, a translated work, is one of the very few campaign histories available to English speakers. Hickok 1997 points to Bosnia’s unique military status in the Ottoman arsenal. Smiley 2010 is included in this section to illustrate the range of works dealing with the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire before 1850. The Crimean War period and the end of empire, especially World War I, are better represented because of the interest of European historians in these conflicts, but even among Ottomanists, the end of empire has generated much work in the last decade. The return of attention to the topic of Comparative Empires and Warfare in its global guise has awakened interest in the structure, expression, and evolution of Ottoman military power in general.
Aksan, Virginia H. Ottoman Wars, 1700–1870: An Empire Besieged. Harlow, UK: Longman Pearson, 2007.
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Part of a series edited for Longman by Hamish Scott, Modern Wars in Perspective, this work provides a synthesis of, and considerable details on, the armies and related military and diplomatic institutions of the later Ottomans as well as setting out an agenda for much-needed further research.
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Fahmy, Khaled. All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army, and the Making of Modern Egypt. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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Fahmy’s book constitutes a close study of the military reforms of Muhammad Ali, utilizing Egypt’s archives in the work, especially the correspondence between Muhammad Ali and his son, Ibrahim, the conqueror of Syria in 1831. The work focuses on the creation of the national army by Muhammad Ali through conscription of the Egyptian peasants and of the devastating impact on both the population and the economy.
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Heinzelmann, Tobias. Heiliger Kampf oder Landesverteidigung? Die Diskussion um die Einführung der allgemeinen Militärpflicht im Osmanischen Reich, 1826–1856. Frankfurt: P. Lang, 2004.
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Heinzelmann has produced a comprehensive look at the military reforms under Mahmud II, especially compulsory service. Also in Turkish: Cihaddan Vatan Savunmasına: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’ında Genel Askerlik Yükümlülüğü, 1826–1856 (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2008).
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Hickok, Michael Robert. Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997.
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A study of the province of Bosnia and its administrators. Bosnia accepted Ottoman rule under the condition of maintaining a separate military tradition. In the eighteenth century in particular, the Bosnian militia aided the Ottoman central military considerably. During the reforms of the 1820s, the Bosnians revolted against the attempts to impose the new regimen on their traditional forces.
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Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, Alexander. Russo-Turkish War of 1806–1812. 2 vols. West Chester, OH: Nafziger Collection, 2002.
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During this campaign, the Russian army trapped the Ottoman army on the left bank of the Danube at Ruse and acquired the new territory of Bessarabia. This translation is one of the very few pre–World War I campaign histories in English.
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Moreau, Odile. L’Empire ottoman à l’âge des réformes: Les hommes et les idées du “Nouvel Ordre” militaire, 1826–1914. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2007.
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This work explores the difficulties concerning manpower and conscription as expressed by the reforming bureaucrats of the age.
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Shaw, Stanford. Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
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Shaw’s work envisioned a sultan and his kitchen cabinet working hard to recover the finances and military institutions of the traditional Ottoman system while experimenting with new ideas modeled on the Russian reforms of Peter the Great. It suffers from a considerable opacity of evidence and a top-down view.
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Smiley, Will. “The Rules of War on the Ottoman Frontiers: An Overview of Military Captivity, 1699–1829.” In Empires and Peninsulas: Southeastern Europe between Carlowitz and the Peace of Adrianople, 1699–1829. Edited by Maria Baramova, Plamen Mitev, Ivan Parvev, and Vania Racheva, 63–72. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2010.
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A significant exploration of the emerging treaty regulations regarding prisoners of war in the Ottoman Empire.
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Yılmaz, Gültekin. “Neferin Adı Yok” Zorunlu Askerliğe Geçiş Sürecinde Osmanlı Develeti’nde Siyaset, Ordu ve Toplum, 1826–1839. Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2009.
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A meticulously detailed study of the reforms of Mahmud II, especially on conscription and the impact of discipline and the regimental changes. An article of his work in English, “II. Mahmud Üniformalı bir Sultan/A Sultan in Uniform Mahmud II,” is available in Coşkun Yılmaz, ed., II. Mahmud: Yeniden Yapılan Sürecinde İstanbul/Mahmud II: Istanbul in the Process of Being Rebuilt (Istanbul: Nadirkitap, 2010), pp. 103–129.
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General Narratives for Wider Audiences
Well-known Eastern Question surveys barely include any reference to the Ottoman point of view. The historiography has developed significantly, but Oriental tales continue to substitute for serious accounts of the empire. Wheatcroft 2009 and Goodwin 1994 attempt a more balanced picture. Other works, such as the surveys of Lewis 2001 and Berkes 1998, evince more interest in the political and social transformation of the same period and, hence, the authors have muted the technical aspects of the military change underway. Nicolle 2010 offers a new view of the rise of the Ottoman dynasty, Pagden 2008 is one of a myriad of books on Muslim–Christian encounters that continue to find audiences, especially after 2001. Aksan 2011 redresses the assumptions that all military reform came from the West.
Aksan, Virginia. “Islam-Christian Transfers of Military Technology, 1730–1918.” In European History Online. 2011.
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This online article addresses the question of the influence (or not) of the military missions to the Ottomans in the late empire.
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Berkes, Niyazi. The Development of Secularism in Turkey. New York: Routledge, 1998.
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This influential, intellectual study on the transformation of Ottoman society treats the military necessities that drove the reforms cursorily and neglects what has been described as the alternative Muslim modernity model. Originally published in 1964.
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Goodwin, Godfrey. The Janissaries. London: Saqi, 1994.
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This volume consists of a series of vignettes culled from numerous observers of the Ottomans across the centuries. It is accessible, if sensationalistic, but it was not intended to serve as a history of the imperial military system.
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Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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Lewis’s work, which is still widely available, was profoundly influenced by post–World War II theories of development as exemplified in the Turkish republican model, anachronistically applied to the supposed Westernization of the Ottoman world in the reforms of Selim III in the late 18th century.
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Nicolle, David. Cross and Crescent in the Balkans: The Ottoman Conquest of South-Eastern Europe, 14th–15th Centuries. Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword Military, 2010.
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This work by a prolific author of Middle Eastern military history sets the fall of Constantinople in the context of the proceeding 150 years and the gradual rise of the Ottoman Turks.
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Pagden, Anthony. Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle between East and West. New York: Random House, 2008.
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The title says it all. Pagden has produced a readable volume that includes the Ottomans but capitalizes on stereotypes that seem to have an endless shelf life.
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Wheatcroft, Andrew. The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
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A good narrative of the events surrounding the siege of Vienna in 1683. Wheatcroft’s expertise is the Habsburgs; the Ottoman side is less well represented. The work could have used more maps and illustrations.
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Reference Works and Textbooks
The Ottoman world has suffered from a lack of encyclopedias and textbooks in general, but the last decade has seen an explosion of such materials as interest in the pre-modern Middle East has grown. Ágoston and Masters 2009 is an encyclopedia aimed at upper-level high school and university students, while Fleet, et al. 2006–2012 is the usual pastiche of selected authors and lacks depth on military questions. Hanioğlu 2010 and Zürcher 2004 are by authors who are old hands on the Young Turks and have been included here as examples of the most detailed work on the period. Finkel 2006 is a big sweep work with extraordinary detail from the Ottoman chronicles. The authors of Uyar and Erickson 2009 have teamed up to write this lean history of the military forces of the empire and republic, while Mikaberidze 2011, an edited encyclopedia, opens up the entire military world of Muslim civilization in a depth that has heretofore not been attempted. Peacock 2009 provides an extraordinary and diachronic look at the frontiers across the Ottoman world.
Ágoston, Gábor, and Bruce Masters. Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
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This is the first modern attempt at a general audience snapshot of the Ottomans by two experts in the field. As Ágoston is also a military historian, many of the articles on the armed forces are written by him and are very informative.
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Fleet, Kate, Suraiya Faroqhi, and Reşat Kasaba, eds. The Cambridge History of Turkey. 4 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006–2012.
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As with all such collected works, these volumes were written and compiled for more than a decade, and they are eclectic, with little actual military history represented. Nonetheless, they represent contemporary scholarship and are very informative about Ottoman society and culture as well as modern Turkey. Also available at Cambridge Histories Online by subscription.
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Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
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An encyclopedic narrative from an author who started as an Ottoman-Habsburg military historian, this book offers wonderful, episodic glimpses, drawn from an array of contemporaries, into the workings of the Ottomans and their armed forces.
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Hanioğlu, Şükrü. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
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Hanioğlu is the acknowledged expert on the origins of the Turkish nationalist intellectuals and the origins of the military revolt in the officer class of Macedonia. This short textbook offers a unique perspective on late Ottoman society, and it carries through that expertise to the 1908 coup d’état of the Committee of Union and Progress. However, it falls short of a comprehensive coverage of the final collapse. Also available as an e-book.
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Mikaberidze, Alexander, ed. Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011.
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The intent here was to create an accessible military–political history of Muslim societies from the 7th century forward, from within their regional contexts and with a deliberate effort to include regions, events, and key players often neglected in Western histories. Coverage is remarkably comprehensive and free of the hyperventilating that characterizes much of modern work on Islam. The Ottoman armed forces receive their due. Also available as an e-book.
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Peacock, A. C. S., ed. The Frontiers of the Ottoman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197264423.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This collection of essays has an encyclopedic range on fortifications, administration, populations, and economies of Ottoman borderlands. Notable articles include those by Victor Ostapchuk and Svitlana Bilyayeva, “The Ottoman Northern Black Sea Frontier at Akkerman Fortress: The Present View from a Historical and Archaeological Project” (pp. 137–170), and Kahraman Şakul, “Ottoman Attempts to Control the Adriatic Frontier in the Napoleonic Wars” (pp. 253–270).
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Uyar, Mesut, and Edward J. Erickson. A Military History of the Ottomans from Osman to Atatürk. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2009.
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An informative survey of the entire span of the empire and republican armed forces. It is the only one of its kind in English, so it is a welcome addition to the military literature. The Ottomans are credited with having built the bureaucracy to sustain the continuity into the republic and the creation of a modern army, but the work ignores the Armenian genocide.
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Zürcher, Erik Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. 3d ed. London: I. B.Tauris, 2004.
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Zürcher is a celebrated scholar of late Ottoman Turkey, and, like Hanioğlu, he is well versed in the Committee of Union and Progress.
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Crimean War
The Crimean War, once relegated as an afterthought to Eastern Question surveys, has reemerged of late with new standing as the first global war, and it has generated recent interest in historians of military medicine, indigenous troops, and transcultural networks of military manpower and leadership. Goldfrank 1994 and Figes 2011 represent the short textbook and longer reflective narratives, respectively, while Saab 1977, a study of the origins, is an old favorite that has not been superseded. Clay 2000, a study of Ottoman indebtedness, should be paired with Badem 2010, the first to examine the war from the Ottoman side, and Allen and Muratov 2010, a well-known study. The collection of articles in Borejsza 2011 introduces a new generation of international scholarship.
Allen, W. E. D., and P. P. Muratov. The Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828–1921. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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A classic work of geographical and ethnographical precision that has yet to be superseded. Also on Cambridge Books Online. Originally published in 1953.
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Badem, Candan. The Ottoman Crimean War, 1853–1856. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004182059.i-432Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is the first extensively researched study of the Crimean War from the Ottoman side. Badem’s work should serve as an eye-opener for European military historians, giving a perspective that has long been missing on the global integration, indebtedness, and contested that characterized the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.
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Borejsza, Jerzy W., ed. The Crimean War, 1853–1856: Colonial Skirmish or Rehearsal for World War? Empires, Nations, and Individuals. Papers drawn from a conference held at Warsaw, Poland, in 2007. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Neriton, 2011.
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This collection of articles is from a conference held in Warsaw in 2007, and it includes a cross section of new work in Russian, German, French, and English, the latter including a number of young Ottoman historians.
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Figes, Orlando. The Crimean War: A History. New York: Henry Holt, 2011.
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Prize-winning historian, though controversial, Figes exemplifies the new views on the significance of the Crimean War in global history, taking the reader well beyond Florence Nightingale and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
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Clay, Christopher. Gold for the Sultan: Western Bankers and Ottoman Finance, 1856–1881: A Contribution to Ottoman and International Financial History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000.
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Everything you need to know about the Ottoman Bank, established once the sultan found he could no longer finance his military reforms. Run by foreigners, it was, as Feroz Ahmed once suggested, a forerunner of the International Monetary Fund. Though not an easy read, it nonetheless complements the military histories as a further explanation for the difficulties faced by the Ottoman government during the Crimean War and after.
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Goldfrank, David M. The Origins of the Crimean War. London: Longman, 1994.
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This is now a Pearson education paperback on demand. Goldfrank gives a straightforward account of the international relations imbroglio that led to the Crimean War. The book has the virtue of including the Ottomans to some extent and being quite accessible.
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Saab, Ann Pottinger. The Origins of the Crimean Alliance. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977.
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Saab focuses on the Byzantine politics of the period as well, but her work stands out for its very extensive use of diplomatic records and her ability to recognize and actually give the Ottoman officials some agency.
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World War I
The Ottomans and their successors, the Turkish nationalists of the Committee of Union and Progress, are increasingly well represented in the literature on World War I. In addition to some reworking of the reasons for the Ottoman commitment to war found in Aksakal 2008, a number of works are available on actual campaigns, including Erickson 2003 and Erickson 2001. McMeekin 2010 is a new study of the old question of Germany’s relationship with Turkey before and during World War I. Nezir-Akmese 2005 is one of a new group of studies arguing for continuity from empire to republic, especially regarding the military bureaucracy and its positivist approaches to reform. Klein 2011 and Gingeras 2009 are new approaches to the special problems with irregulars. Suny, et al. 2011 point to the problems concerning conscription and the Armenian question, respectively. Zürcher 1998 initiated the study of Ottoman conscription. Literatures in Turkish, German, and Russian are enormous, of course, as is the British obsession with the Gallipoli campaign, a topic that dwarfs almost every other aspect of the Middle Eastern front in World War I.
Aksakal, Mustafa. The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511551987Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A thorough examination at the documentary evidence in German, Ottoman, and British archives about the Ottoman drift into war with Germany as helped along by Enver Pasha and the Committee of Union and Progress triumvirate.
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Erickson, Edward J. Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001.
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Military historians can learn a considerable amount about the culture and effectiveness (or not) of the late Ottoman army in this book, which is largely about logistics and campaign effectiveness. Armenian historians have objected to the author’s silence on the genocide question. Also available as an e-book.
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Erickson, Edward J. Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
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Erickson, a retired US army officer, has become a one-man industry on World War I and the Ottomans with help from Turkish military specialists. This title focuses on the disastrous campaigns of the Young Turks under Enver Pasha, making the argument that the best units were destroyed in the confrontations with the Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs, even as the Ottomans held on to Edirne, which remains part of Turkey today. Also available as an e-book.
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Gingeras, Ryan. Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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Gingeras studies the local violence between Greek and immigrant communities such as the Circassians on the Marmara and Aegean coasts during and immediately following World War I. Greek occupation forces, Ottoman loyalists, Turkish nationalists, and local Muslim and Christian residents resisted and suffered as the Ottoman Empire unraveled.
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Klein, Janet. The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
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A first study in English of the Hamidiye paramilitary troops organized by Sultan Abdülhamid II. Klein has produced a work that addresses state and tribal relations in an emerging nationalist environment.
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McMeekin, Sean. The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2010.
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A close study of the events that led up to Turkey’s alliance with Germany in 1914, which integrates military imperatives with international politics around the question of Pan-Islamism.
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Nezir-Akmese, Handan. The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World War I. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005.
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This work argues for the continuity of military power from the empire into the republic as the main reason for Atatürk’s success.
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Suny, Ronald Grigor, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark. A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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An authoritative collection of essays by historians of Russia, Armenia, and Turkey, including Göçek, who reviews the Turkish historiography on the question, and Zürcher.
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Zürcher, E. J. “The Ottoman Conscription System in Theory and Practice, 1844–1918.” International Review of Social History 43.3 (1998): 437–449.
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Deals with conscription in the Ottoman Empire.
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Comparative Empires and Warfare
The Ottoman Empire has increasingly been drawn into the comparative military history of empires in the East and West. Cultural comparisons are most fruitful in the discussion of frontiers and borderlands as well as the limits of premodern agrarian empires, and the understanding of the impact of local culture on the organization and financing of military manpower in such contexts. Aksan 1999 and Ágoston 2011 set out an agenda for further comparative research. Grant 2007 explores the Ottoman armament industry and Black 1999 was the first to bring together East and West in a comparative military volume. Kennedy and Khoury 2007 examines the British India and late Ottoman worlds. While Perdue and Islamoğlu 2001 considers the possibilities of Qing/Ottoman comparisons, Lee 2011 examines relations between empires and indigenous military labor, and Reynolds 2011 describes the Russian-Ottoman confrontations on the Caucasian frontier. Streusand 2011 addresses the common problems of three premodern agrarian societies.
Ágoston, Gábor. “Military Transformation in the Ottoman Empire and Russia, 1500–1800.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12.2 (2011): 281–319.
DOI: 10.1353/kri.2011.0018Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines grand strategies, expressions of power, and their limitations in the imperial rivalries.
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Aksan, Virginia H. “Locating the Ottomans among Early Modern Empires.” Journal of Early Modern History 3.2 (1999): 103–134.
DOI: 10.1163/157006599X00017Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Constructs a template for possible elements of comparison in the Austrian, Ottoman, and Russian empires.
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Black, Jeremy, ed. War in the Early Modern World, 1450–1815. London: UCL Press, 1999.
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Black’s was one of the first efforts to draw together the culture of war in major world civilizations, including the Ottomans, in a comparative military context. The Ottoman contribution is by Virginia Aksan, “Ottoman War and Warfare 1453–1812” (pp. 147–176). Also available as an e-book.
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Grant, Jonathan A. Rulers, Guns and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
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This is an international and episodic look at specific arms deals across the globe that includes the arms trading patterns of the late Ottoman Empire. Grant published earlier articles on the Ottoman situation, specifically one titled: “Rethinking the Ottoman ‘Decline’: Military Technology Diffusion in the Ottoman Empire, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” Journal of World History 10 (1999): 179–201.
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Kennedy, Dane, and Dina Rizk Khoury, eds. Special Issue: Comparing Empires. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27.2 (2007).
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This collection of essays stems from a conference on British India and the Ottomans. Especially noteworthy is C. A. Bayly’s introductory article, “Distorted Development: The Ottoman Empire and British India, circa 1780–1916”: 112–144.
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Lee, Wayne E., ed. Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and Warfare in the Early Modern World. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
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A series of papers on trans-imperial military practices with indigenous peoples. It includes one by Virginia Aksan: “Ottoman Ethnographies of Warfare 1500–1800” (pp. 141–167).
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Perdue, Peter, and Huri Islamoğlu. “Introduction.” Journal of Early Modern History 5.4 (2001): 271–278.
DOI: 10.1163/157006501X00113Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An issue devoted to the Qing and Ottoman Empires. This unique collaboration lays out the possibilities for comparison across Asian empires, and it includes a discussion of the mobilization of military power.
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Reynolds, Michael. Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511762017Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A groundbreaking study of the northern Caucasian frontier, contested by Russia and Turkey for more than 150 years.
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Streusand, Douglas. Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011.
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While designed as a textbook, this is an accessible, comparative imperial history of three Muslim agrarian civilizations that struggled with nomadic warrior populations and evolving armies that required gunpowder technology and weaponry.