OTTOMANS: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs

In the words of the Sunday Times: 'A winning portrait of seven centuries of empire, teeming with life and colour, human interest and oddity, cruelty and oppression mixed with pleasure, benevolence and great artistic beauty.' Baer has written a brilliantly panoramic account of the history of the Ottoman Empire from its genesis to its dissolution and challenges and transforms how we think of the East and the West, Enlightenment and modernity, and directly confronts the horrors as well as the achievements of Ottoman rule. Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2022, this is a major new history of the diverse empire that straddled East and West. The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic-Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West when, in reality, the Ottomans' multi-ethnic, multilingual and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe's heart. Recounting their remarkable rise to a world empire, Baer traces their debts to the Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic and Byzantine heritage and upends Western accounts of the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration and the Reformation. He describes how they used both religious tolerance and conversion to integrate conquered peoples and how in the 19th century the Ottomans embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide and the dynasty's demise after the first world war. The account challenges our understandings of sexuality, orientalism and genocide in this radical retelling of a remarkable story, and a magisterial portrait of a dynastic power. 543pp, paperback with many photos including colour.