A history of the Ottoman 'worldview'

'A History of the Ottoman Empire' by Douglas A. Howard (Cambridge University Press, 393 pages, $35)

Ottoman history has rarely been more popular in Turkey than it is today. It has also rarely been morepoliticized. Many on the Islamic conservative right are only interested in the history of the Ottoman Empire if it can be crammed into a narrow contemporary agenda. People who find the complicated, contradictory historical record too messy are happy to distort it to fit a more flattering agenda. In the process, the many subtleties of Ottoman history - the chaotic diversity and contradictions that make it such a fascinating subject - get flattened out. 

"A History of the Ottoman Empire" by Calvin College historian Professor Douglas Howard is the latest single-volume English-language treatment of over six centuries of the Ottoman imperial dynasty. It is not intended as a corrective to popular histories in today's Turkey (the audience is completely different). But academic rigor is anathema to such dubious history. Coming amid the misunderstood Ottomanism of today's political fantasists, it is a welcome palette cleanser. 

The book is determinedly chronological and makes few concessions to narrative. But it is not without color. At times Howard writes with flair, as in the first sentence of the first chapter: "The rains were heavy that spring and the Sangarius River overflowed its banks, seeking out its former bed under a long-abandoned bridge." Later on, surveying the wreckage after the Greek retreat and the Great Fire of İzmir during Turkey's independence war, we read that "imputations of blame on all sides spread as a kind of surrogate of sadness."

From the 13th to the early 20th century, the Ottoman family enjoyed the longest...