Reviews 353

meant to strive in particular for autonomy. At the same time, however, they are constantly being
constricted by vigorous and unpredictable immigration regimes, untrustworthy trade partners, and
the burden of familial obligations.
Focusing on merchants as diplomats means the analysis emphasizes “trade’s status not solely
as an economic strategy deployed at times of necessity but also as a creative and social field of
thought and actions that offers unique insights for anthropologists seeking to understand the over-
lapping domains of morality, politics, economy, and religion” (p. 305). This has some implications
for several key themes in the study of Afghanistan, such as the role of ethnicity and national iden-
tity. Instead of ethnicity as political deterministic, as depicted in some studies, Marsden points to
the ways in which merchants constantly renegotiate their identities vis-à-vis ethnicity and state,
demanding a more dynamic and modern understanding of these concepts than are usually thrust
upon Afghans by politicians.
To support his claims, Marsden scatters ethnographic vignettes throughout the text. These
pieces are insightful and refreshing, though at times feel somewhat disjointed from the rest of
the work. Contributing to this feeling, Marsden bends over backwards to insert comparisons with
studies of traders in South Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere to compare
patterns of trade and social practices in an attempt at reasserting the global nature of the merchant
world he is exploring. Somewhat ironically, this also makes perhaps the greatest feat of the text
less striking during an initial reading: Marsden’s ethnography almost effortlessly brings together
different groups of individuals from merchants who live in Dushanbe with Russian wives, to large-
scale global businessmen in Dubai, to fishmongers in London. The reader is entirely convinced of
the way that similar moral and ethical struggles and negotiations bring these individuals together,
which makes some of the sudden, repeated comparisons with other cases somewhat distracting
from the rich portrayal of these fascinating actors.
After the intense international focus on the country following the American-led invasion in
2001, one of the subtexts of the book seems to be the fear of Marsden and his interlocutors
that Afghanistan will again slip away, back into Orientalist clichés and overly simplified media
narratives. This sprawling ethnography of Afghanistan’s place in modern capitalism’s ebbs and
flows and the transnational lives of the merchants in it, however, does much to ensure that this
will not happen.

DOUGLAS A. HOWARD, A History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2017). Pp. 412. $34.99 paper. ISBN: 9780521727303

REVIEWED BY NIR SHAFIR, Department of History, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla,
Calif.; e-mail: nshafir@ucsd.edu
doi:10.1017/S0020743818000375

Over the past two decades, the scope and profile of Ottoman history within the field of Middle
Eastern studies has expanded greatly, so much so that the field has largely become synonymous
with the history of the region in general. Whereas until recently students would learn Arabic first
and then tepidly dip their foot into Persian, it has now become de rigueur for them to study Arabic
or Turkish from the get-go. Instructors who wished to incorporate the empire into their classes,
however, had limited options when it came to a textbook or a general overview. Halil İnalçık’s
foundational work, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600 (London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1973), has held its ground, even though it was originally written in 1973. Yet, İnalçık
refused to extend his book’s narrative beyond the 17th century, the supposed age of decline. More
recent works, such as Colin Imber’s The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power

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 354 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 50 (2018)

(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), were too dry and too institutional. Caroline Finkel’s
Osman’s Dream (New York: Basic Books, 2006) fashioned a detailed yet readable narrative of
political events that went well into the 20th century but often failed to provide strong analytical
heft. Douglas Howard’s new textbook on the Ottoman Empire finds a sweet spot and promises to
become the field’s standard textbook in the coming years.
Howard’s most significant contribution is his choice of chronology. He covers the whole tem-
poral scope of the Ottoman dynasty from its unassuming start as a minor principality outside of
Nicaea to its ultimate dissolution in 1924 and each of its seven chapters covers one Islamic century
during the reign of the empire and is given equal space within the book. Students of Ottoman his-
tory will find Howard’s narrative progressing through the familiar territory of the birth of a small
emirate abutting a curtailed Byzantine Empire in the 14th century, that consolidates into a major
empire in the 15th and 16th centuries, and adapts multiple times to changing conditions over the
17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. What makes it novel though is that Howard sticks to his initial
declaration that “no era is more or less important than any other” (p. 6). There is no notion of a
classical or ideal form of Ottoman political structure here and the biological metaphor of birth,
growth, maturity, and senescence is purposefully and refreshingly absent. Consequently, there is
no mention of the “decline narrative” whose refutation has preoccupied Ottomanists of the past
generation, including Howard himself. While readers looking for a response to earlier scholar-
ship might be surprised by Howard’s decision to pass over the word “decline,” even to refute the
concept, it is ultimately a wise one. Not only does it make it easier to explain Ottoman history to
students but it also marks the maturity of Ottoman studies as a field, no longer so obsessed with
questions about the centrality of the state.
Howard’s book is likewise a précis of the past generation of scholarship on the Ottoman Em-
pire. The syncretism of late medieval society in Anatolia and the Balkans is explained clearly and
eloquently as are the financial reforms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the rise of provincial
powerholders in the 18th century. More impressive than his broad coverage is that he is able to
pithily and effectively summarize major historical developments, but retains enough telling ex-
amples and details to give the text some flavor. In particular, Howard fills the grey infoboxes,
an indispensable feature of textbooks today, with pleasant segments of high Ottoman poetry and
literature, pieces of Ottomanica that are often difficult for many to access. His incorporation of
cultural concepts as well as political events is one of the distinctive features of the book as com-
pared to other introductory texts which have generally focused solely on formal political and
institutional functions of the empire. These cultural aspects are part of his large attempt to cap-
ture an “Ottoman worldview” built from the three layers of the political dynasty, its economic
prosperity, and its spiritual beliefs (pp. 4–5). Howard most likely chose to depict the Ottoman
Empire as a cultural entity to move away from the traditional developmental narratives of the
empire, but the claim can ring a bit hollow at times, as when he emphasizes in the introduction
that for Ottoman writers, “ruins stood for the loss that lay at the heart of everything” (p. 3). In the
body of the text itself, however, the cultural history approach serves the central narrative well and
allows him to integrate, at least partially, the empire’s substantial non-Muslim populations into
the narrative. His personal observations and photographs, like his snapshot of a minaret in the
sky of Vidin or a bilingual Turkish-Hebrew inscription from 19th-century Bergama, gracefully
draw out this shared cultural life and give readers a small glimpse into the material remains of the
empire.
As a textbook, the faults in Howard’s work are few and far between. He has a particular gift
for providing just enough information, never overwhelming the reader with too many details, but
making his references easily accessible at the end of each chapter. While some might find its
frame too lean, it gives instructors the option to supplement the book with material from other
sources. In particular, social historical glimpses into the life of ordinary Ottoman subjects are
a bit sparse and the burgeoning field of environmental history is still poorly represented. And

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 Reviews 355

Howard’s book won’t suffice as the primary textbook for a general course on Middle Eastern
history. Perhaps this is a symptom of the aforementioned larger trend in the scholarly community
of overly aligning the history of the Middle East as a whole with the Ottoman Empire, leaving
places such as Iran, the Caucasus, and the Maghreb on the margins. Yet, it also points to the one
ironic flaw of this history of the Ottoman Empire as a broader work: it is too Ottoman. Readers
may find it difficult to see how the empire fits into a larger early modern world in Howard’s
book. Where did the political and cultural frontiers of the empire lie? How did it compare to its
neighbors in Muscovy or Isfahan and what connections and disruptions crafted its Mediterranean
space? These questions inevitably emerge from its purposeful choice of a culturalist framework,
but it is ultimately a minor complaint to an otherwise wonderful work that will serve the field
well for years to come.

PASCAL FIRGES, French Revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire: Diplomacy, Political Culture and
the Limiting of Universal Revolution, 1792–1798 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Pp. 304. $80.55 cloth. ISBN: 9780198759966

REVIEWED BY VIRGINIA H. AKSAN, Department of History, McMaster University, Hamilton,

Ontario, Canada; e-mail: vaksan@mcmaster.ca
doi:10.1017/S0020743818000399

In a season of centennials and bicentennials of catastrophic wars, 1815, ending the Napoleonic
Wars has prompted a great deal of reflection on the nature and meaning of the era, considered by
most as the birth of the global age in the twin revolutions of emancipation and constitutionalism.
For historians of the Middle East, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt (1798) and subsequent events
were once narrated as the quintessence of the great clash of European and Ottoman (read Muslim)
civilizations and long stood as the marker of the beginning of the Turkish republican narrative, to
the extent that it was argued that it prompted the reforms of Sultans Selim III (1789–1807) and
Mahmud II (1807–39). One salutary effect of bicentennials such as these is that while new work
occasionally reifies such narratives, time does “wound all heels,” as Groucho Marx once said.
So it has been with 1815. Europeanists have led the way in offering new interpretations of
the age which includes Istanbul as a key player in the diplomatic wrangling of the early stages
of France’s challenge to Europe, especially 1789–1806. Pascal Firges gives us one exemplary
example of it in his French Revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire: Diplomacy, Political Culture
and the Limiting of Universal Revolution, 1792–1798. The subtitle says it all. This is a book
that explores imperial French diplomacy at a moment of rebranding from imperial monarchy to
republic, using the context of Istanbul to explore the inner workings of a Parisian exercise in
convincing a skeptical expatriate community.
Pascal Firges is not an Ottomanist, as he readily acknowledges, but he is very generous in
his wide reading of the available literature in translation and has made a considered effort to
give the Ottoman officials in the book a voice as part of what he understands as converging
processes of change in the age of revolutions. The work is dense, as studies in diplomacy often
are, as the blur of detail around who said what to whom, with what intent and what impact, can
mask the narrative of international events in favor of the rivalries of diplomatic representatives,
their financial difficulties, and quarrels with local merchants in a difficult environment. Firges’s
deft take on the endless squabbling and jockeying for diplomatic notice by the Porte is both
informative and amusing. His central intent is really to talk about the language and propaganda
of the new nation and how it was reflected in the orders given to the republican representative to
the Ottoman court and refracted by the expatriate French merchant community.

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