My encounter with young refugees and former political prisoners from Turkey in Basel in the early 1980s decisively oriented me as a future historian toward the Middle East. My studies led me to discover the end of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1918 efforts to bring peace and a new order, both globally and nationally, as a highly under-researched, but essential topic.
Although partisan and perspectival (pro-British), this book offers invaluable insights into the “Lausanne moment.”
Its author was an insider of the post-Great War Paris conferences and the final Conference of Lausanne. Based on contemporary notes of the author and further material, this book is a main source for the research on the Lausanne Near East Peace Conference.
In Harold Nicolson's own words 'This study of Lord Curzon represents the third volume of a trilogy on British diplomacy covering the years from 1870 to 1924. The first volume of that trilogy was a biography entitled Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy. The second volume was a critical survey of the Paris conference called Peacemaking, 1919.' All three volumes are reissued in Faber Finds. Curzon himself, not a modest man it must be admitted, rated highly the work of his final years. In his 'Literary Testament' dictated only a few hours before his death he said, 'As…
My encounter with young refugees and former political prisoners from Turkey in Basel in the early 1980s decisively oriented me as a future historian toward the Middle East. My studies led me to discover the end of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1918 efforts to bring peace and a new order, both globally and nationally, as a highly under-researched, but essential topic.
I highly appreciate this book. Based on meticulous historical research, it has contributed to rethinking and reappraising the long widely disqualified League of Nations.
The failure of the League of Nations’ peace project had been sealed at the Lausanne Conference a hundred years ago, and the League’s Covenant did no longer figure in the Lausanne Treaty. But the need of a convincing global and democratic peace project is today no less topical than it was after the Great War, before the rise of the Nazis.
At the end of the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference saw a battle over the future of empire. The victorious allied powers wanted to annex the Ottoman territories and German colonies they had occupied; Woodrow Wilson and a groundswell of anti-imperialist activism stood in their way. France, Belgium, Japan and the British dominions reluctantly agreed to an Anglo-American proposal to hold and administer those allied conquests under "mandate" from the new League of Nations. In the end, fourteen mandated territories were set up across the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific. Against all odds, these disparate and far-flung…
My encounter with young refugees and former political prisoners from Turkey in Basel in the early 1980s decisively oriented me as a future historian toward the Middle East. My studies led me to discover the end of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1918 efforts to bring peace and a new order, both globally and nationally, as a highly under-researched, but essential topic.
This is a personal account from the decade preceding the Lausanne Treaty.
Jakob Künzler and his wife were stationed in the Swiss Hospital in Urfa, Mesopotamia, and witnessed the destruction of the Armenians at close hand. As disturbing as is Künzler’s sober report, at the same time it is a declaration of love for a turbulent land of different languages, religions, and the people who live there.
Presents information regarding the Armenian massacres in Urfa, Ottoman Turkey during the World War (1914-1918). the fate of the Armenian widows and orphans as well as author's description of his work in the German Orient Mission hospital, deportations of the Armenians as well as the Kurds, requisitions of the Armenian property by the Turkish government officials and citizens.
My encounter with young refugees and former political prisoners from Turkey in Basel in the early 1980s decisively oriented me as a future historian toward the Middle East. My studies led me to discover the end of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1918 efforts to bring peace and a new order, both globally and nationally, as a highly under-researched, but essential topic.
This very impressive documentary novel tells the true story of a Kurdish mother and child surviving famine after the massacre of Kurdish Alevis in Dersim, Turkey.
Most scholars today consider the 1937-8 military campaign in that region in Northeastern Anatolia a genocide. It was the last one in a series that accompanied the making of the post-Ottoman Turkish nation-state, whose birth the Lausanne Treaty had certified in 1923.
Haydar Karataş, the author, of Gece Kelebeği - Perperık-a Söe (Butterfly of the Night) now lives in exile in Zurich. The book's child-narrator, his mother, was swept up in a series of tragic historical event in the mountainous region of Dersim in Northeastern Anatolia. Dersim (renamed Tunceli in 1935). The area was 90 km east-west and 70 km north-south and, in the 1930s, it had a population of nearly 80,000 people, most of them involved agriculture.
Dersim was at odds with the politico-cultural landscape of 1930s Turkey, whose leaders wanted "a country with one language, one mentality, and unity of…
I’m a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where I teach and write about topics ranging from feminism to World War. I became interested in the history of the Armenian Genocide because my grandmother was a survivor. Other books I’ve written include: Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain; Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide and the Birth of the Middle East and The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide.
Reading this book you will come to understand the extent of the suffering brought on by World War I to Ottoman society.
I particularly like Akin’s retelling of the experience of ordinary people who lived through the ordeal. Accounts of the war by soldiers and survivors of the nearly decade-long conflict that engulfed Ottoman lands add texture and shape to the military narrative that began in 1914 and only came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
The Ottoman Empire was unprepared for the massive conflict of World War I. Lacking the infrastructure and resources necessary to wage a modern war, the empire's statesmen reached beyond the battlefield to sustain their war effort. They placed unprecedented hardships onto the shoulders of the Ottoman people: mass conscription, a state-controlled economy, widespread food shortages, and ethnic cleansing. By war's end, few aspects of Ottoman daily life remained untouched.
When the War Came Home reveals the catastrophic impact of this global conflict on ordinary Ottomans. Drawing on a wide range of sources-from petitions, diaries, and newspapers to folk songs and…
My primary field in history is Spain, over which I have published six books. However, I became interested in the Middle East when the US Army deployed me to Iraq in 2004. Although I had taught the history of the region, experiencing war and reconstruction for myself, and spending time in Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar made the Middle East come alive to me. I wrote Undoing Saddam, my war diary, during my Iraq tour.I followed up that work with a textbook on Arabia, articles on the Ottoman Empire, and plans for future projects on the region, both on its own and in relation to early modern and modern Spain.
It may seem odd to recommend a book focused on a fifteen-year period, in the midst of a region that boasts many thousands of years of history. However, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire echoed across the Middle East in ways we are just beginning to understand. Having traveled to Turkey and many nations in this region, I’ve encountered historic sites, political quandaries, border conflicts, and ethnic troubles that can only be understood with the end of the Ottomans in mind. McMeekin does an exemplary job of viewing the Ottoman ending in the context of local challenges, global warfare, rising nationalism, and economic pressures in all directions. I had many “so that’s why that is the way it is” moments, and also enjoyed the gripping read.
'An outstanding history ... one of the best writers on the First World War' Simon Sebag Montefiore
Shortlisted for the Duke of Westminster Medal for Military Literature
The Ottoman Endgame is the first, and definitive, single-volume history of the Ottoman empire's agonising war for survival. Beginning with Italy's invasion of Ottoman Tripoli in September 1911, the Empire was in a permanent state of emergency, with hardly a frontier not under direct threat. Assailed by enemies on all sides, the Empire-which had for generations been assumed to be a rotten shell-proved to be strikingly resilient, beating off major attacks at Gallipoli…
I am a Scottish Ottoman historian who has lived half my life in Istanbul. Realising that the archive-based research of my PhD and after was read by too few, I wrote Osman's Dream, which has been translated into several languages and is read generally, as well as by students. I am fascinated by the 'where' of history, and follow historical routes the slow way, by foot or on horseback, to reach the sites where events occurred. That's the thing about living where the history you study happened: its traces and artefacts are all around, every day. I hope I have brought a sense of Ottoman place to Osman's Dream.
Hot off the press, and building on the success of Aksan's earlier volume on the later Ottoman empire, this book charts the transformation of this once-formidable state into a colonial client of Britain, France, Germany, and Russia. It traces the lives of friends and foes of the Ottomans who witnessed the rise and fall of a constitutional experiment in an era of shrinking borders, global consciousness, ethno-religious nationalism, and revolutionary fervour. The narrative's primary focus is on those who negotiated with, fought for, defended, and finally challenged the sultan and the system in its final days just prior to WWI, resulting in a legacy of international relations and communal violence that continues into the present.
The chronology has been extended to 1918 to cover the end of the Ottoman Empire which provides students with the whole picture of the rise and fall of the Empire.
An introductory chapter giving an overview of the whole period, perfect for lecturers to assign as an introductory reading to their course, enabling students of all levels and understanding to be on the same level for their course.
More on society and how war and militarisation affected Ottoman society which provides students with the social as well as the military history giving a fuller picture of the period.
I’m a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where I teach and write about topics ranging from feminism to World War. I became interested in the history of the Armenian Genocide because my grandmother was a survivor. Other books I’ve written include: Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain; Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide and the Birth of the Middle East and The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide.
This magisterial and sweeping history explains why the Ottomans went to war on the side of the Central Powers and how they failed to achieve victory. It discusses the military confrontations and battlefront traumas that resulted from the decision to go to war against the Allies in 1914 in a highly readable and engaging style.
By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict. Unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was fast-moving and unpredictable, with the Turks inflicting decisive defeats on the Entente in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia,…
I am a writer based in Ireland. When I was fifteen, I read about the Battle of Verdun, and the horror and ineptitude of it led me into an obsession with World War I. Visiting the Imperial War Museum, I learned about the white feather of cowardice, bestowed by girls upon men out of uniform. Such a transformation of a symbol of peace to an instrument of stigma and shame made me think of Irish society as well as British. When White Feathers was published, its refusal to follow a sentimental “Tommy in the trenches” line angered some revisionist critics. But in the end, it is a passionate and intense love story with resistance.
Anyush’s eponymous heroine is a young Armenian girl whose life is turned upside-down by the genocide carried out by the Ottomans under the Young Turks during fighting in World War One. I was only vaguely aware of the genocide before picking up the novel and it combines a beautiful love story between Anyush and Turkish captain Jahan with a vivid account of the horrors people faced. Beautifully researched and written by Martine Madden, it’s a book that both enthralled and humbled me.
On the Black Sea coast, Anyush Charcoudian dances at her friend's wedding, dreaming of a life beyond her small Armenian village. Defying tradition, she embarks on a secret and dangerous affair with a Turkish officer, Captain Jahan Orfalea. As the First World War rages, the Armenian people are branded enemies of the state, and atrocities grow day by day. Torn apart and catapulted into a struggle to survive in the face of persecution and hatred, the lovers strive desperately to be reunited.
I am a Scottish Ottoman historian who has lived half my life in Istanbul. Realising that the archive-based research of my PhD and after was read by too few, I wrote Osman's Dream, which has been translated into several languages and is read generally, as well as by students. I am fascinated by the 'where' of history, and follow historical routes the slow way, by foot or on horseback, to reach the sites where events occurred. That's the thing about living where the history you study happened: its traces and artefacts are all around, every day. I hope I have brought a sense of Ottoman place to Osman's Dream.
This lavishly-illustrated volume takes a broad look at Ottoman culinary culture, holding up a mirror to the empire as reflected in the food and foodways of its people, from sultans to commoners. It offers a sweeping panorama of the evolution of culinary traditions that drew on the practices of the many societies inhabiting the Ottoman lands. The author lives in and travels widely in Turkey, encountering dishes that have ancient roots and finding food-related customs that survive until the present day. This is no book of recipes, but a compendium of richer food for thought.
The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and longest-lasting empires in history. In this powerful and complex empire, the production and consumption of food reflected the lives of people from sultans to soldiers. Food bound people of different classes and background together, defining identity and serving symbolic functions in the social, religious, political and military spheres. Bountiful Empire: A History of Ottoman Cuisine examines the foodways of the Ottoman Empire as they changed and evolved over more than five centuries. The book starts with an overview of the earlier culinary traditions in which Ottoman cuisine was rooted, such as…
