The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe by Daniel Goffman (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 232 hermeneutical impasse anyway. Equally important, I wonder what is gained by a focus on the academic aspects (and repercussions) of Lollardy instead of on the political, lay—as opposed to academic, clerical—agency it gave, an agency that is so much of the reason the movement continues to fascinate today. Ghosh partially answers these queries with her call for a “reassessment of the historiography of ‘medieval’ into ‘renaissance’ and ‘reformation’” (216) at the end of the book, a reassessment that she argues “cannot be complete without a far fuller investigation of late medieval intellectual history, including the history of intellectual institution” (216). I would wish that Ghosh had made this statement earlier so that it might inform a larger part of the book, as it is only here at the end that the reason for her focus on the university—which sometimes, as in her discussion of Woodford, appears inexplicably biased—is finally explained. MARGARET LAMONT, English, UCLA Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe, New Approaches to European History, series ed. William Beik and T. C. W. Blanning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002) xxiii + 273 pp., ill., maps Daniel Goffman’s The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe is one of the recent additions to Cambridge’s New Approaches to European History series, a group of updated, authoritative textbooks for “advanced school students and undergraduates.” The book bears all the marks of a classic textbook, including plenty of maps and illustrations, a glossary, and a chronological table. Moreover , the book’s multicultural ideology is particularly well suited for use in today’s updated history curricula. The very inclusion of the Ottoman Empire in a series on European history signals that the editors take seriously the phrase “New Approaches” in their series title. Goffman’s task is a similarly novel one: to present an empathetic reading of the Empire and its relationship with Europe. Goffman explains his goals in the introductory chapter, where he gives a concise account of “orientalist” mythology and scholarship. As a corrective to the Eurocentric mythology of the past, Goffman proposes a “change of perspective ” he calls “Ottomancentrism.” He claims that “if we imagine Istanbul rather than Paris at the middle of the world, Ottoman relations with the rest of Europe assume a startling character” (6). This simple perspective change is the key to the book’s historical approach. Goffman’s Ottoman Empire is a diverse and religiously-tolerant society that directly contradicts previous scholarly accounts of a belligerent and intolerant realm. If Goffman’s history is sympathetic to the Ottomans, it is also thorough. The second chapter chronicles the historiographical debate about the ethnic heritage of the Empire: Were the “the roots of the Ottoman genius ... a legacy of the Byzantines, the Arabs, or the Central Asians?” (29) Goffman favors Cemal Kafadar’s thesis in Between Two Worlds that the Ottomans drew from all of these influences and blended them together into a unique culture.4 Subsequent chapters trace the evolution of Ottoman social structures; chart the complex 4 Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley 1995). REVIEWS 233 relationship between the Ottomans and Venetians; analyze the role of nonMuslims within the Empire; and recount the seventeenth-century shift in trading power from Mediterranean to Atlantic states. In the conclusion, Goffman situates the book’s events in a wider global perspective. Placing the Ottoman Empire in relation to the contemporary European culture of exploration and discovery, Goffman calls the Americas “a tempting distraction” for the European merchants and explorers of the period, but claims that the continent’s shift of interest to the New World can be exaggerated. The Ottoman Empire was still more populated by, and more lucrative for, Europeans than the Americas were in the early seventeenth century (232). Two chapters (the fourth and the seventh) are occupied with revising the claim that the empire declined after the reign of Süleyman. Goffman acknowledges the “decentralization of Ottoman authority” in the seventeenth century but rejects a simple “decline model” of imperial history; he focuses, instead, on various cultural crises and renovations during the period (127). He succinctly summarizes his attitude toward the widespread historical...