The Ottomans is a wonderfully written, accessible historical account perfect for both seasoned historians and laymen wishing to dip their feet into the world of historical non-fiction.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

The Ottoman Empire is a constant source of fascination for me-the collapse of that Empire led to independence for so many nations, and I don’t really know as much as I want to about the reach of the Empire, and its legacy. Baer is a perfect chronicler of all the complexities of describing an Empire that lasted 5 centuries and encompassed multiple nations. Along with the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Prussian Empires, the Ottoman Empire was one of the great empires that collapsed after WWI, but popular narratives don’t discuss it as much, or its contributions to the world, apart from the depictions of the Empire as the barbaric Other, existing in isolation and featuring as the constant enemy (Kirstin Downey’s book on Isabella la Catolica, constantly describes attacks on Spain by Vikings in terms of ‘settling’ and ‘expansion’, but uses terms like ‘barbaric slaughter’, ‘violent attack’ , and invasions, to describe attacks by the Moorish Empire). This is a perspective Baer wants to show is incorrect, and that this was as vibrant and diverse as the others, with its own arts and culture, that in turn influenced art in other places.
The book is structured really well: Baer divides the historical periods loosely depending on the character of that period in Ottoman history and gives you an introduction to that, explaining the main themes of the period, before delving deeper into every monarch in that particular time. I loved Christophe de Bellaigue’s book on SUleyman the Magnificent, but I wanted more detail on how exactly he Empire was administered, given the diversity of ethnicities, and languages, and this book gave me that, and more. The Ottomans more or less followed the model of the Roman Empire, with provinces governed by Ottoman administrators, and the option of advancing your fortunes if you converted to Islam ( exactly the model followed by Constantine and his successors, that led to the spread of Christianity in Europe). The Ottoman Emperors made success and belonging as a citizen of the Empire contingent on Islam, which that meant that anyone, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, language, could rise through the ranks in the court, diplomacy, business or the military. Analogously, in Europe at the time, it would be much more rare to have several courtiers, or army leaders, or businessmen, whose language and ethnicity were completely different-there was an odd Eugene of Savoy , of course, in the Hapsburg Court, but this was a lot more commonplace in the Ottoman Empire.He also explains the quite unique Janissary guard, formed entirely of children taken from conquered provinces, trained in IStranbul to be the Emperor’s elite fighting force. Apart from the life of the Emperors, Baer shows you how daily life and trade were conducted, and evolved, and rebellions quelled-the story of Sabbatai Zvi was one of the most interesting historical episodes I’ve read.
I did not know just how integrated the Ottoman Empire was with Europe, with regards to trade and military campaigns ( I didn’t know, for instance, that the Ottoman Army and Navy were one of the allies of the British in Nelson’s Egyptian campaign, the French and Ottomans had a military alliance for nearly two and a half centuries, the Ottoman troops wintering in Marseille during a campaign, the Ottomans were a major part of the Crimean War, though they’re not mentioned at all ). When accounts are written of seafring nations, the Ottomans aren’t mentioned-though they should have been, and there are excellent chapters on the Ottoman Navy.
The centuries before the 2 World Wars had seen constant upheavals and battles in Europe, and an integral part in the balance of power was the Ottoman Empire-regarded as a balancing power when it was expedient. There were constant cultural exchanges, trade, military alliances all of which the Empire very much was a part, right from the times of the Renaissance. The Ottomans were one of the mail allies of Elizabeth I, against King Philip’s Spain, and there were ambassadors to the empire-Marlowe’s play, Tamburlaine, was influenced by these socio-political developments, and Bayezid, the Ottoman Sultan defeated by Tamburlaine is one of the tragic rulers in the play. Elizabeth 1 corresponded with the mother of the Sultan as well. Lew Wallace, the writer of Ben Hur, for instance, was America’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and was such a close confidant of Sultan Abdulhamid that he was asked to stay back even after his term ended as an adviser! ( he was tempted to, but returned to America because he missed his home). An interesting aspect Baer brings up is that Protestantism got a fillip from Ottoman military victories-Protestant leaders lobbied for more privileges ( and got them too), given the supposed Islamic threat!
Baer’s interests include the intersection of Judaism and the Ottoman Empire- He explains the Ottoman policy of toleration of other religions-different from secularism where religions are equal, the policy of toleration followed meant that everyone could follow their religions, and build their places of worship, but accept that they could only rise to a certain extent, and not beyond that. While this sounds harsh from a 21st Century perspective, for several millennia of human history, there was a State religion-mosques couldn’t be built in Europe in the Middle Ages, for instance, and Jews weren’t even allowed to live in several parts of Europe and Russia, and were exiled from Spain as well, after the Reconquista. Many settled in the Ottoman Empire, and their businesses flourished.
The Ottomans faced several internal rebellions, several of them by Sufi preachers-a fact I found interesting because Erdogan’s crackdown and tightening of security in Turkey in the 2000s also happened, ostensibly, because of a preacher, Gullen. The Empire derived legitimacy in its foundational stages with the blessing of Sufi preachers, but they also posed a threat to a monarchy, as they could be an alternate centre of power, since they also functioned on a cult of personality. I never quite knew why so many Sufi centres had been banned, I only knew vaguely that they were, and this book explains a lot.
While the Empire wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t really the ignorant, regressive backwater that’s the popular view. How did an Empire that seemed to embrace diversity to this extent then end up losing the plot? Since the Empire was a part of Europe, developments elsewhere affected this monarchy to the same extent, and Baer expertly chronicles the rise of ethno-nationalism in the late 18th and 19th centuries, that saw a surge in similar sentiments in the Ottoman Empire as well-the irony being that some of the Young Turks who espoused a Turkish identity over an Ottoman one, based on Islam, were born in parts of Greece. One of my favourite books was Eugene Rogan’s End of the Ottomans, and this book shows how all the previous centuries led up to that. Baer also has a detailed account on the Armenian Genocide, and traces the origins of the Kurdish conflict to Ottoman policies. ( an interesting anecdote he has of the time is the Ottoman Sultan, during the Armenian Genocide, asking Theodor Herzl to give them some good PR in the European press, knowing of his sympathies to the Ottoman Empire, as a place of refuge for several Jewish refugees. Herzl complied-another example showing that history is nuanced, and complicated, and human ebings can behave in unexpected ways).
Baer effectively shows that narratives of a clash of civilisations, with millennia of conflict between supposedly Christian civilisations and Islamic civilisations, that have come into vogue over the last half a century, really aren’t true. History cannot be explained through such simplistic binaries, and requires more nuanced consideration and narratives, to arrive at a proper understanding of cause and effect. I cannot recommend this book enough.

I enjoyed this although it isn’t an easy read. It took a while and I had to go back a few times but the book is an excellent reassessment of the Ottomans and their place in world history. I had only a vague understanding of Ottoman achievement and I now feel I could read more and fully grasp their significance. Mr Baer is an academic and the writing - and sentence length - reflects this but the book is accessible with a bit of effort and that’s no bad thing.

In a world where we are often patronised and every television programme does a recap after the adverts, I enjoyed the challenge of sitting down with a good book and working through its depths. There is a lot packed into this and I will be doing further reading and research into the Empire and the times described.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley

The Ottomans is a massively comprehensive history of the empire from start to finish. It's so comprehensive that I struggled to stay focused on it for long periods of reading. It would be great for a class or an academic, but it's probably too much for the common interested layperson such as myself. That said, it was still an interesting read when I was able to stay focused on it. Baer doesn't try to excuse or biasedly villify the Ottomans. Baer tells it like it is (or was). Some of that can make for pretty uncomfortable reading given some of the interests and activities of the Ottoman culture that Baer emphasizes, but again, it's the history.

I'd recommend The Ottomans to historians.

I have enjoyed several historical books of late, from the Greeks to the Persians and so I looked forward to “The Ottomans” by Marc David Baer. The intention of the book is to reposition the Ottoman Empire in our minds and highlight how they impacted history with a less biased perspective.

I found the narrative a little disrupted, regularly the author delves off into other histories or shares in more detail on a topic than felt necessary. Those who love historical nuggets about the time, will enjoy them but I found I had to keep clarifying the thread I was following. Perhaps I should have been less surprised by the repetitive nature of history, the regular murder of family members and desire for political powers, it’s brutal. This obviously occurred in other empires and it is the choice of the writer the amount of emphasis and detail to share, and this one had a little too much for me.

Despite all this, the journey is fascinating, it shows the way the Ottoman empire weaves into so much history and how they contributed hugely to where we are today, in terms of art, literature, language, music and much more. The book runs right up to modern day and clarifies how some of what contributes to the Middle East being where it is now.

Having looked for books that covered this period, in this one, I found rather a rarity and, if you are looking for a detailed and well-written overview, this one is worth reading. It’s a three out of five on the enJOYment scale.

I received a complimentary copy of the book from Perseus Books through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Brilliant and accessible fresh look at an old topic: the history and context of the Ottoman empire. Author Marc David Baer, a historian and professor at the London School of Economics gives us a look back at this important empire with all the benefits of a twenty-first century perspective. Baer offers a chronological narrative of political, social, and cultural life in and around the Anatolian region from the conquest of Constantinople to the birth of the Turkish Republic. He is a master at curating the most important and most interesting details. The chronology helps build an important argument about the tremendous influence that the Ottomans had on the development of Europe. Useful volume for anyone interested in the topic as well as advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

I'm fascinated by Ottoman history and this was a comprehensive and informative book. It was also a book that kept me reading till late in the night.
Ottomans are part of the European history but they're often depicted as the bad guys. I'm Italian and there's a sort of ancestral fear of them due some local massacre that didn't help.
I never thought they considered themselves as the heir to the Roman empire and this is something that should be taken into account.
I discovered them when I traveled to Istanbul and this book helped me to learn more about them and their history (not the first I read but one of the best).
It's a fascinating and well researched book that should be read by anyone interested in learning more about a less known part of European history.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Many, many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this excellent work!

This history of the Ottoman Empire was very readable, entertaining, and satisfying. This filled in some knowledge gaps for me and I had a good time along the way. Highly recommend. This was well done. The writing was very compelling. Looking for more from this author (new to me).

Mr. Baer has produced in my opinion the best one-volume general history of the Ottoman Empire since Lord Kinross wrote "The Ottoman Centuries" in 1977. This really good history traces the rise of a small semi-nomadic people from the Anatolian plateau to the Empire that controlled parts of Asia, Africa as well as Europe. From Osman the Great to the Mad Sultan Murad IVth. This is a very good general history that is accessible to the curious as well as a refreshingly stylistically written book for the historian.

A superb history of an oft-overlooked historical power. The book is highly readable, written in an easy to digest style, yet well-grounded in research. Highly recommend
!

A thorough history of the Ottoman Empire from its origin in Anatolia in the 13th century until its collapse in the early 20th century.

The author correctly recognizes how the Ottoman Empire is generally only tangentially studied and appreciated: it is known for finally capturing Constantinople and eliminating the Byzantine Empire; it was romanticized as the land of sultans and his harem; it represented a continual threat to central Europe; they were part of the Central Powers. Yet the Ottomans are seen as wholly Other, Eastern; not part of the European world.

The author thus tells the history of the Ottomans to try to refute that view. He speaks of their alliances with the Byzantines at times, the multinational, multiethnic, and multireligious nature of the Empire, its frequent tolerance, and how it saw itself as the next iteration of the Roman Empire, its leaders as Caesars, and the people of southeastern Europe as Rumis, or Romans.

The lives of the various leaders are told as well as their successes and failures; much is said about the nature of the harem and the institutional bureaucracy. Much is made of the sexuality of the age and how it privileged the love of young boys over that of women, but also how that view was attempted to be fully reformed in the 19th century. The author tries to suggest that the Ottomans were about discovery also, but the evidence for such a view is spotty. He is on much firmer ground regarding how Ottoman influence was profoundly felt throughout Europe, and how European influence profoundly influenced the Ottoman Empire.

It is somewhat anachronistic to glorify the empire as a multicultural haven; yes, many groups found greater tolerance under the Ottomans than they did under other regimes, but even as this story goes, it becomes clear that in times of crisis it reasserted itself as a fundamentally Muslim enterprise. Its undoing is well described by the nationalism that fueled the 19th and early 20th centuries: both the nationalism of the peoples who separated from the empire, and the Turkish nationalism that overtook the empire's leadership.

A good corrective to neglect of the Ottoman Empire, even if its arguments are often a bit overstated.

Very interesting profiles and events under the leaders of the Ottoman empire up until its end in the 1920s. A look at politics, religion and other topics under their rule.

I wanted a book about the Ottoman history and boy did I get one. A reference tome which reads like a story, but then they do say the best stories come from fact. This book is a powerhouse. Fact written in a way so compelling that I had trouble putting this book down when my breaks from work finished, It took me a few weeks but I did it, I was sad to finish it but I learnt so much from reading it and that’s all I ask for from books.

Definitely one for the history buffs out there.

The Ottomans was an exquisite study of of one of history’s most grand empires. Baer takes the reader through the history of the Ottomans from their early nomadic conquests for Anatolia to their fall after World War One which gives a complete picture of this empire. In this picture he manages to show the many different inhabitants of the Ottomans and not just those of Turkic descent. This will definitely be a great work for scholars in the field of Ottoman studies in the years to come.

This was a timely acquisition. I had been looking for a good book on the Ottomans and the author covers this significant period in history in good enough details to keep a casual history reader like me engaged.

I have taught world history for 20 years. I already had learned new things and gotten new perspectives before I had completed reading the introduction. That pretty much says it all. There is a lot of material in this book and even those who have delved into the world of the Ottomans before seem likely to gain new insights and learn new details. Some arguments were more conclusively proven than others (inevitable in any book tackling a topic this broad), but I am glad to have read this and consider it time well spent.

I had a hard time rating this. The author’s knowledge and scholarship are apparent and the thesis is sound. Baer posits that the Ottoman Empire was an important member of the European community and contributed significantly to the history of the continent. There were sections of insightful analysis, especially in the chapters covering the Renaissance and the Armenian genocide. However, these illuminating moments were not sufficient to overcome the lack of explanatory detail and storytelling ability in the rest of the book.

The introduction began with a beautiful description of Baer’s experience in the Topkapi Palace Library; the space came alive, and I felt the author’s enthusiasm for poring over ancient maps and manuscripts. This section made me so excited to work through the next 500 pages. But nothing in the rest of the book rose to this level of interest. Instead, the book overwhelmed with facts and details without explanations, requiring a lot of Googling to understand the author’s references. If the book was meant for laypeople, it could have used a gentler hand, with more explanation and storytelling instead of dry facts. If the audience was academic, the book probably would have benefited from more limited scope.

The Ottoman Empire contained extremes of human experience in piety, ruthlessness, sumptuousness, and beyond. I really wanted to walk away from this book understanding the Ottomans in all their diversity. I think 3 stars reflects how well this book helped me understand them and internalize what I read. Nonetheless, if you already have a decent working knowledge of the Ottomans and are interested in a reexamination of the dynasty’s relationship with Europe, this book is for you!

Marc David Baer’s offers a new history of the Ottomans that provides complete coverage from their beginnings as a nomadic tribe on the Anatolian plains to their collapse of a tottering empire at the conclusion of WWII. But not only is it sweeping and detailed in its scope, but this is also an eye-opening historical read as well. Much of the narrative is constructed around the intent of dismantling outdated perspectives of the dynasty and their eventual empire - primarily that of the Ottomans being an exotic, Islamic, and Oriental entity that existed and operated in total opposite to Europe and the west, as opposed to their actual nature as rulers of a diverse land that was just as European as much as it was Asian. It makes for an engrossingly informative experience in this regard, one made all the more enjoyable by the author’s ability to hit the sweet spot of detailed comprehensiveness and readability.

Also impressive is how despite Baer’s clear passion for the subject matter, he does lionize or idolize. Instead, his book ends up striking a quite balanced tone thanks to the author’s willingness to embrace the Ottomans’ story with all of its complexities and contradictions. "The Ottomans" is just as happy to highlight the diverse empire’s strengths, like its multiethnic makeup and policies of religious toleration, as much as it is to detail weaknesses and also the atrocities that occurred at Ottoman hands.

For anyone who has been wishing to learn more about the dynasty that held sway in southeastern Europe and Asian Minor for several hundred years, this is definitely the place to start. And for history lovers simply looking for a quality work to curl up with, this is definitely a title for the to-read list.

A rollicking and often truculent tapestry of the Ottoman Empire from its birth to its demise at the end of WWI, especially through the lives, deeds and misdeeds of its rulers & their accomplishments throughout the long history of their infamous and higly resilient dynasty. A worthy addition to the historiography of that uniquely exceptional Empire and its incredible influence in the Balkans & around the Mediterranean World, Mr.Baer as gifted us with a solidly researched and very comprehensive study that is not only easily accessible to anyone interested to discover the Ottomans and their historical legacies but is also a very entertaining journey from start to finish.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Perseus Books for giving me the opportunity to read this wonderful book prior to its release date