Empires in Macro-Sociology

Abstract

Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. By Karen Barkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 342 pp., $25.99 paperback (ISBN 978-0-521-71533-1). Empire of Difference offers a fresh and challenging interpretation of Ottoman imperial rule, focusing not on its tortuous decline as is emphasized by those writers following Gibbons' footsteps, but rather on its flexibility and for that, its longevity. Through adaptive ideology, management of diversity, and carefully calibrated distribution of rewards across peripheral elites, the empire persisted, even flourished, for centuries. A key metaphor for the imperial form of rule is that of hub (the Ottoman center) and irregular spokes (links of various degrees of thickness to each of the peripheries), without a rim (connection between peripheries). Through the highlighting of key moments of this form of quasi-domination by the imperial center, but with comparable cases in constant juxtaposition, Barkey masterfully traces the mechanisms of Ottoman rule in particular, and imperial rule more generally. I take this opportunity that International Studies Review offers me, however, to elaborate neither on those mechanisms, nor on the impressive scope both historically and comparatively that Barkey's work covers. For that, readers of this review are urged to consult this work and to follow the logic of imperial rule as told by an expert not only in Ottoman studies [as already exemplified by her first book (Barkey 1994)], but in macro-comparative historical sociology (Eisenstadt 1963; Doyle 1986; Mann 1986). Rather, in this review I wish to use this book as a foil in order to expose some conceptual confusions into which the sociological study of empires has fallen. An empire is defined here as a “‘negotiated’ enterprise where the basic configuration of relationships between imperial authorities and peripheries is constructed piece meal” (p. 1). Barkey then contends “that to preserve this structure…an empire needs to maintain [ inter alia ] diversity through a stable relationship with intermediary elites. Empires, it follows, have an “interest” …