Delightful, fascinating, and deep
Review of Lords of the Horizons- A History of the Ottoman Empire by Jason Goodwin
This is not conventional history, but a flowing narrative that skips around in time; the subject matter of the chapters are organized as dense essays on military affairs, the populations within the Empire, and governance practices. The author went directly to the original sources of memoirs, diplomatic correspondence, and military communiques, always good for the beautiful, quirky anecdote. Many readers may not like this loose style, but I thought it made the book extremely fun and readable and vivid. Nonetheless, without knowledge of the outlines of Ottoman history, this would have been a far more difficult read and perhaps at many points incomprehensible. As such, the books are complementary and can be read together at great profit. But this book is a genuine literary masterpiece that left me in awe of the author's talent.
The story is incredible: from a small band of tough nomads in the steppes of Asia, several outstanding leaders created the first truly professional army since the Roman age. To the aristocratic knights in Europe – bound by chivalric conventions and a cumbersome military apparatus with untrustworthy mercenaries – the Turks appeared as a terrifying and unstoppable force of fierce and disciplined warriors. For 200 years, they advanced into the heart of Europe and conquered large portions of Asia Minor and North Africa with dreams of world domination that appeared all too credible to contemporary observers. The Ottomans also created a multi-ethnic society that for the times was tolerant and inclusive, did not seek to convert its subjects (they could tax non-Muslims after all), and was more or less a meritocracy based on ability rather than merely privilege.
Unfortunately, once the empiric expansion stopped, most of its virtues became deadly liabilities. During the Renaissance, the Ottoman Empire abruptly stalled and then became famously corrupt and decadent, after a series of leaders who can only be called military geniuses. Their administrative skills never advanced beyond the phenomenally innovative organization of military camps to reinvent the governance of Ottoman society.
First, without the pillage income from continual conquest, revenues needed to be raised to pay the standing army. The responsibility for this fell to regional governors, who preyed upon local residents, severely undermining the authority of the state while creating a kind of aristocracy of privilege for themselves (and hence mediocrity).
Second, the elite Janissaries – like the Praetorian guard of the Romans – realized the true extent of their power, and became corrupted and dangerous power brokers in Istanbul.
Third, the command power of the Sultan, so useful in war, blocked the diffusion of power to a professional administrative caste, which remained under-developed into the 19th century. Effective pashas came and went, often strangled by the bowstring for failure, but they did not establish schools to train their successors.
Fourth, the medieval mentality – an acceptance of fate that enabled Ottoman warriors to rush into battle with the fearlessness of religious true believers – gradually gave way to personal caution, as exemplified by the defensive behavior of its leaders.
Fifth, the quality of the hereditary monarchic line declined after Suleyman the Magnificent, in large part because the Sultan's sons were more or less imprisoned in the Harem – a parallel universe of pleasure and bizarre political machination – rather than gaining experience as governors of provinces (as they had in the empire's early centuries). Interestingly, none of the above issues became deadend problems in Europe, whose societies were evolving in some ways to explicitly to resolve them. Finally, the forces of nationalism created centrifugal forces that doomed the ancient mores that made such a vast, eclectic society possible, which I believe still stands as an example towards which we might strive in new ways in the current global society that is in formation.
This is one of those books that can fill the reader with wonder at the sweep of history and human possibility. It has turned my interest in Turkish history into an inspiration. Recommended with the greatest enthusiasm. Indeed, contemporary Turkey remains one of the most important political experiments on the planet in our current crisis of civilization.
This book offers a stark contrast to Kinross' The Ottoman Centuries. Kinross' book is dry, stuffily pedantic, and laden with the details of obscure territorial skirmishes. While I learned the outlines of Ottoman history in Kinross, it was this book that gave me a true flavor for that vanished world – who the people were, why they acted the way they did, and how things appeared in the context of the time. It is a dazzling and confidently erudite tour of life then (without a whiff of pretension), and I was utterly engrossed from the minute I opened the book. Indeed, I was not intending to read this now, but I simply could not put it down when I looked at it out of curiosity.
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