Examines the Ottoman military machine, detailing its success in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Focuses mainly on the evolution of the Ottoman military organization and its subsequent impact on Ottoman society in a period of change, analyzing why the Ottomans were the focus of such intense military concern. Provides a detailed study of several campaigns, recreating the physical and psychological realities of war as experienced by Ottoman soldiers. Includes bandw historical illustrations. Murphey is a senior lecturer at the Center for Byzantine, Ottoman, and modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A study of the Ottoman military machine and its successes in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East in a period when they were feared by western European states and the focus of much military concern. The book is intended for undergraduate courses in early modern history, Ottoman history, history of the Middle East and North Africa, and for military historians.

Gabor Agoston's book contributes to an emerging strand of military history, that examines organised violence as a challenge to early modern states, their societies and economies. His is the first to examine the weapons technology and armaments industries of the Ottoman Empire, the only Islamic empire that threatened Europe on its own territory in the age of the Gunpowder Revolution. Based on extensive research in the Turkish archives, the book affords much insight regarding the early success and subsequent failure of an Islamic empire against European adversaries. It demonstrates Ottoman flexibility and the existence of an early modern arms market and information exchange across the cultural divide, as well as Ottoman self-sufficiency in weapons and arms production well into the eighteenth century. Challenging the sweeping statements of Eurocentric and Orientalist scholarship, the book disputes the notion of Islamic conservatism, the Ottomans' supposed technological inferiority and the alleged insufficiencies in production capacity. This is a provocative, intelligent and penetrating analysis, which successfully contends traditional perceptions of Ottoman and Islamic history.

This crucial period in Russia's history has been neglected by historians, but Brian Davies' study provides an essential insight into the emergence of Russia as a great power.

In the early modern world three dominant cultures of war were shaped by a synergy of their internal and external interactions. One was Latin Christian western Europe. Another was Ottoman Islam. The third, no less vital for so often being overlooked, was east-central Europe: Poland/Lithuania, Livonia, Russia, the freebooting Cossacks, a volatile mix of variations on a general Christian theme. William Urban's fascinating narrative is an integrated account of early modern war at the sharp end: of campaigns and battles, soldiers and generals. Temporally it extends from the French invasion of Italy in 1494 to Austria's Balkan victories culminating in the 1718 Treaty of Peterwardein. Geographically it covers ground from the Low Countries to the depths of the Ukraine. That narrative in turn focuses Urban's major analytical points: the replacement of 'crowd armies' by professionals, and the professionals' integration into crown armies: government-supervised, bureaucratized institutions. The key to this process was the mercenary. Originally recruited because the obligations of feudal levies were too limited, mercenary forces evolved operationally into skilled users of an increasingly complex gunpowder technology in ever more complex tactical situations. By the end of the seventeenth century, soldiers were identifying with the states and the rulers they served.

The Ottoman Army had a significant effect on the history of the modern world and particularly on that of the Middle East and Europe. This study, written by a Turkish and an American scholar, is a revision and corrective to western accounts because it is based on Turkish interpretations, rather than European interpretations, of events. As the world's dominant military machine from 1300 to the mid-1700's, the Ottoman Army led the way in military institutions, organizational structures, technology, and tactics. In decline thereafter, it nevertheless remained a considerable force to be counted in the balance of power through 1918. From its nomadic origins, it underwent revolutions in military affairs as well as several transformations which enabled it to compete on favorable terms with the best of armies of the day. This study tracks the growth of the Ottoman Army as a professional institution from the perspective of the Ottomans themselves, by using previously untapped Ottoman source materials. Additionally, the impact of important commanders and the role of politics, as these affected the army, are examined. The study concludes with the Ottoman legacy and its effect on the Republic and modern Turkish Army. This is a study survey that combines an introductory view of this subject with fresh and original reference-level information. Divided into distinct periods, Uyar and Erickson open with a brief overview of the establishment of the Ottoman Empire and the military systems that shaped the early military patterns. The Ottoman army emerged forcefully in 1453 during the siege of Constantinople and became a dominant social and political force for nearly two hundred years following Mehmed's capture of the city. When the army began to show signs of decay during the mid-seventeenth century, successive Sultans actively sought to transform the institution that protected their power. The reforms and transformations that began frist in 1606successfully preserved the army until the outbreak of the Ottoman-Russian War in 1876. Though the war was brief, its impact was enormous as nationalistic and republican strains placed increasing pressure on the Sultan and his army until, finally, in 1918, those strains proved too great to overcome. By 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk emerged as the leader of a unified national state ruled by a new National Parliament. As Uyar and Erickson demonstrate, the old army of the Sultan had become the army of the Republic, symbolizing the transformation of a dying empire to the new Turkish state make clear that throughout much of its existence, the Ottoman Army was an effective fighting force with professional military institutions and organizational structures.

This book is a history of firearms across the world from the 1100s up to the 1700s, from the time of their invention in China to the time when European firearms had become clearly superior. It asks why it was the Europeans who perfected firearms when it was the Chinese who had invented them, but it answers this question by looking at how firearms were used throughout the world.

The World of the Siege examines relations between the conduct and representations of early modern sieges. The volume offers case studies from various regions in Europe (England, France, the Low Countries, Germany, the Balkans) and throughout the world (the Chinese, Ottoman and Mughal Empires), from the 15th century into the 18th. The international contributors analyse how siege narratives were created and disseminated, and how early modern actors as well as later historians made sense of these violent events in both textual and visual artefacts. . The volume's chronological and geographical breadth provides insight into similarities and differences of siege warfare and military culture across several cultures, countries and centuries, as well as its impact on both combatants and observers. See inside the book.

The articles compiled in Ottoman War & Peace. Studies in Honor of Virginia H. Aksan, honor the prolific career of a foremost scholar of the Ottoman Empire, and engage in redefining the boundaries of Ottoman historiography. Blending micro and macro approaches, the volume covers topics from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries related to the Ottoman military and warfare, biography and intellectual history, and inter-imperial and cross-cultural relations. Through these themes, this volume seeks to bring out and examine the institutional and socio-political complexity of the Ottoman Empire and its peoples. Contributors are Eleazar Birnbaum, Maurits van den Boogert, Palmira Brummett, Frank Castiglione, Linda Darling, Caroline Finkel, Molly Greene, Jane Hathaway, Colin Heywood, Douglas Howard, Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Dina Rizk Khoury, Ethan L. Menchinger, Victor Ostapchuk, Leslie Peirce, James A. Reilly, Will Smiley, Mark Stein, Kahraman Şakul, Veysel Şimşek, Feryal Tansuğ, Baki Tezcan, Fatih Yeşil, Aysel Yıldız.