Ottoman Imperial Diplomacy: A Political, Social and Cultural History

Doğan Gürpınar’s most recent contribution to Late Ottoman History places the formation of modern Turkish nationalism not...

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Ottomans Imagining Japan: East, Middle East, and Non-Western Modernity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

The division of the world into the “West and the “East” continues to exert substantial influence on the way we see,...

Friday, January 1, 2016

Still Awaited: A Truly Objective History of the Making of the Modern Middle East

We are now witnessing a harvest of new history books on the making of the modern Middle East. Five are chosen for a...

Sunday, January 1, 2017

A Concise History of Bosnia

Cathie Carmichael’s book integrated the political, economic and cultural history of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)....

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Islamist Thinkers in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic

Late Ottoman intellectual history, especially the nineteenth century, was seen by Bernard Lewis (in his The Emergence of...

Sunday, January 1, 2017

The Ottoman Culture of Defeat: The Balkan Wars and Their Aftermath

The Balkan Wars are among the harshest defeats the Ottomans ever experienced. The shock that was felt with the loss of the...

Saturday, April 1, 2017

How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism

Over the course of the past 300 years, how does leadership compare from ‘East’ to ‘West’ in terms of both economic and...

Monday, January 1, 2018

The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East. The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria

Ethnic and religious minorities – and concomitant majorities – do not just exist sui generis. They have to be constructed...

Wednesday, January 1, 2014