M. Şükrü Hanioğlu. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. 241 S. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-691-13452-9.

Reviewed by Hans-Lukas Kieser

Published on H-Soz-u-Kult (September, 2010)

Mehmed Şükrü Hanioğlu has been research‐ III wrote these verses shortly before his death in ing and teaching late Ottoman history for more 1774, after a disastrous defeat against tsarist Rus‐ than thirty years. Three bulky and groundbreak‐ sia, with a feeling of inferiority and decline that ing books on the Young Turks have made him had already begun in the mid-century however. known among experts. Mehmed Şükrü Hanioğlu, After him his son Selim III started a dramatic saga Doctor Abdullah Cevdet. A Political Thinker and of late Ottoman reforms that culminated in the His Time, Istanbul 1981 (in Turkish); idem, The Tanzimat Era (1839–1876), though continuing un‐ Young Turks in Opposition, Oxford 1995; idem, til 1918. It consisted basically, Hanioğlu argues, in Preparation for a Revolution. The Young Turks, an attempt to centralize, and to fght regional 1902–1908, Oxford 2001. His new book is a com‐ abuse of imperially sanctioned power; resistance paratively small and elegantly written compen‐ from the periphery against centralization in‐ dium for a larger public. It is unique in that it formed the genesis of fnally separatist move‐ makes a monograph of the late Ottoman Empire, ments. that is its last 150 years until the aftermath of Ottoman existential crisis, intensifed Ot‐ World War I. toman diplomacy, the “Eastern Question” in inter‐ The book divides this era chronologically into national afairs, and a Western secular modernity six chapters of which the last deals with the “long‐ tied to industrialization and accelerated global ex‐ est decade of the late Ottoman Empire” (1908– pansion coincided in the late 18th century. Diplo‐ 1918), the frst with the situation at the turn to the matic history is therefore a key to understanding 19th century. This review concentrates upon as‐ the late Ottoman Empire within European and pects not dealt with in Hanioğlu's earlier books. world history – of which Ottoman history, Han‐ “The world is turning upside down with no ioğlu is right to remind us, is an essential part. He hope for better during our reign/ […] We can do pays particular attention to the Anglo-Ottoman re‐ nothing but beg God for mercy.” Sultan Mustafa lations whose achievements and failures decided H-Net Reviews largely over the Ottoman fate, externally and in‐ nity” (p. 3) and “the supranational ideology of Ot‐ ternally. Late Ottoman diplomacy and intellectual tomanism” (p. 106). This included “literary ex‐ thought – the book emphasizes both aspects – changes between the various Ottoman communi‐ could however never be reduced to “reaction to ties,” (p. 99) among which Armenians excelled as the West”, the author stresses. Even if not on a early authors, actors and actresses. One may par, it was interaction, at times creative and speak of an original, not to say avant-gardist egali‐ shrewd, at times fatally strained. The book skips tarian plurality proclaimed in the Reform Edict of the interaction with the USA which, too, marked 1856 which abolished the hitherto existing hierar‐ the late Ottoman period signifcantly; US mission‐ chical plurality and its political and legal privi‐ aries in particular richly documented the late Ot‐ leges for the Muslims. toman periphery. This Edict and the Ottoman Law of Nationali‐ Hanioğlu, who studied political science at Is‐ ty of 1869 made Muslims and the former non tanbul University in the 1970s, bases his narrative Muslim dhimmi legally equal Ottomans who mostly on Ottoman documents of the central bu‐ could access positions in the state bureaucracy reaucracy and the press, thus giving voice to the and local assemblies. At the same time the Edict imperial elites, less to people in the provinces and institutionalized the millet system, that is the ater‐ to non Muslims. His original account attempts to ritorial autonomies of the Christian and Jewish represent the variety of actors and their time in communities, and demanded its reform toward a their own right. A great strength is the author's in‐ partly secular representative system. What put timate knowledge of the imperial élites (in a Ottomanism at risk was the emergence of ethno- broad sense) and their sources, and of Ottoman nationalism from the millet as well as Muslim Turkish, “one of the richest and most complex leaders who in the name of the sharî‘a refused im‐ languages in the world” by the 19th century. Han‐ perial egalitarian plurality, in particular, as Han‐ ioğlu makes clear from the beginning that he has ioğlu stresses, a modern parliamentarian legisla‐ an axe to grind with Turkish nationalism, its tele‐ ture in which non Muslims participated. The lat‐ ological distortion of historical contexts, and its ter problem hampered the project of a full fedged Manicheism of modern and old, secular and reli‐ constitution for the Empire. Moreover, rhetoric in gious, national and cosmopolitan, pure Turkish favor of reforms emanating from the Great Pow‐ and decadent Ottoman. This critical distance al‐ ers was ambivalent; genuine or “not genuine” (p. lows him to think about Ottoman history in alter‐ 206), it obeyed Euro-centric interests that pre‐ natives, to ponder – without nostalgia – its her‐ ferred a manipulable status quo to an innovative, itage, and to consider its contingencies. An Ot‐ self-reliant and in time territorially reduced Ot‐ toman Empire, for example one whose leaders toman state. In contrast to contemporary Japan, had opted for armed neutrality in 1914, might not the late Ottoman Empire gained “second-class have collapsed; the same is true if British friend‐ membership in the European club”, but was not ship and commitment to Ottoman reform had “free to develop its response to modernity in rela‐ continued after the critical turn of the late 1870s. tively insular security” (pp. 207 and 209). In the three preceding decades, the Tanzimat The crises of the 1870s, including the war in statesmen, strongly backed by Britain, had be‐ the Balkan and Eastern Anatolia, delegitimized lieved in the idea of “a Rechtsstaat” (p. 108). Legal, the Tanzimat principles. Subsequently, the Berlin ideological and educational innovations and an Congress induced a seminal ethno-national post- Europeanizing “process of acculturation” (p. 205) Ottoman reordering of the Balkan and interna‐ had led to a “uniquely Ottoman version of moder‐ tionalized the “Armenian Question” – that is prob‐

2 H-Net Reviews lems of security and legal stability caused by par‐ or summaries of the Ottoman documents it repro‐ ticularly signifcant failures to implement the re‐ duces. forms in the Kurdo-Armenian provinces. Han‐ ioğlu elaborates more clearly the evolution of the Balkan than the eastern provinces whose Armeni‐ an Question remained – even more intensely and for longer than the notorious Macedonian Ques‐ tion – a core issue of both the Eastern Question and the challenge to establish an Ottoman Rechtsstaat. Two ideological reactions to the crises of the Tanzimat, which had been liberal toward religion, crystallized according to Hanioğlu: The young sul‐ tan Abdulhamid II labored “to fashion Islamist modernity in opposition to the West,” whereas, in contrast, a “new intellectual elite expected the Darwinian triumph of science over religion” (p. 138). Part of this elite were the Young Turks, oppo‐ nents of the sultan. Their Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) took power partly in 1908, and dic‐ tatorially in 1913. As both a top expert on the CUP and its strong critic, Hanioğlu has long been expected to write on the CUP also for the period after 1908. He leaves, in contrast to a number of Ottomanist ac‐ counts before him, no doubt that the CUP turned to imperial Turkism instead of Ottomanism well before World War I; that it plausibly thought of establishing a “Great Turanian Empire” (p. 179) at the beginning of the war; and that it was largely responsible for the catastrophes that followed. Nevertheless he remains elliptical on Turkist de‐ mographic engineering in Asia Minor since 1914 and, in particular, the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians who, arguably more than any other group, had had to put their trust in an Ottoman Rechtsstaat and Ottoman modernity. The strength of “A Brief History of the Late Ot‐ toman Empire” is its view of the late Ottoman Em‐ pire both from the imperial inside as well as from a refective and inspiring historical distance. This concise book is very appropriate for general histo‐ ry classes – I may only suggest adding translations

3 H-Net Reviews

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/

Citation: Hans-Lukas Kieser. Review of Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. H-Soz-u-Kult, H-Net Reviews. September, 2010.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31342

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

4