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History of the Ottoman Empire

Greco-Turkish War of 1897

1897 Apr 18 - May 20 Greece
Greco-Turkish War of 1897
The Attack, a painting of the Battle of Domekos, by Fausto Zonaro © Fausto Zonaro

The Ottoman-Greek War of 1897 was a war fought between the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Its immediate cause involved the status of the Ottoman province of Crete, whose Greek-majority population had long desired union with Greece. Despite the Ottoman victory on the field, an autonomous Cretan State under Ottoman suzerainty was established the following year (as a result of the intervention of the Great Powers after the war), with Prince George of Greece and Denmark as its first High Commissioner.

The war put the military and political personnel of Greece to test in an official open war for the first time since the Greek War of Independence in 1821. For the Ottoman Empire, this was also the first war-effort to test a re-organized military system. The Ottoman army operated under the guidance of a German military mission led (1883–1895) by Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, who had reorganized the Ottoman military after its defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

The conflict proved that Greece was wholly unprepared for war. Plans, fortifications and weapons were non-existent, the mass of the officer corps was unsuited to its tasks, and training was inadequate. As a result, the numerically superior, better-organized, -equipped and -led Ottoman forces, heavily composed of Albanian warriors with combat experience, pushed the Greek forces south out of Thessaly and threatened Athens,[52] only to cease fire when the Great Powers persuaded the Sultan to agree to an armistice.

Map of the Ottoman Empire in 1900. © Juris Tiltins

Map of the Ottoman Empire in 1900. © Juris Tiltins

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History of the Ottoman Empire

References

Encyclopedias

  • Ágoston, Gábor; Masters, Bruce, eds.(2009). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire.New York: Facts On File. ISBN 978-0-8160-6259-1.


Surveys

  • Baram, Uzi and Lynda Carroll, editors. A Historical Archaeology of the Ottoman Empire: Breaking New Ground (Plenum/Kluwer Academic Press, 2000)
  • Barkey, Karen. Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. (2008) 357pp Amazon.com, excerpt and text search
  • Davison, Roderic H. Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (New York: Gordian Press, 1973)
  • Deringil, Selim. The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: IB Tauris, 1998)
  • Faroqhi, Suraiya. The Ottoman Empire: A Short History (2009) 196pp
  • Faroqhi, Suraiya. The Cambridge History of Turkey (Volume 3, 2006) excerpt and text search
  • Faroqhi, Suraiya and Kate Fleet, eds. The Cambridge History of Turkey (Volume 2 2012) essays by scholars
  • Finkel, Caroline (2005). Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-02396-7.
  • Fleet, Kate, ed. The Cambridge History of Turkey (Volume 1, 2009) excerpt and text search, essays by scholars
  • Imber, Colin (2009). The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (2 ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-57451-9.
  • Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire, the Classical Age: 1300–1600. Hachette UK, 2013. [1973]
  • Kasaba, Resat, ed. The Cambridge History of Turkey (vol 4 2008) excerpt and text search vol 4 comprehensive coverage by scholars of 20th century
  • Dimitri Kitsikis, L'Empire ottoman, Presses Universitaires de France, 3rd ed.,1994. ISBN 2-13-043459-2, in French
  • McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 1997
  • McMeekin, Sean. The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power (2010)
  • Pamuk, Sevket. A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (1999). pp. 276
  • Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922 (2005) ISBN 0-521-54782-2.
  • Shaw, Stanford J., and Ezel Kural Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 1, 1977.
  • Somel, Selcuk Aksin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. (2003). 399 pp.
  • Uyar, Mesut; Erickson, Edward (2009). A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Atatürk. ISBN 978-0-275-98876-0.


The Early Ottomans (1300–1453)

  • Kafadar, Cemal (1995). Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20600-7.
  • Lindner, Rudi P. (1983). Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-933070-12-8.
  • Lowry, Heath (2003). The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. Albany: SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-5636-6.
  • Zachariadou, Elizabeth, ed. (1991). The Ottoman Emirate (1300–1389). Rethymnon: Crete University Press.
  • İnalcık Halil, et al. The Ottoman Empire: the Classical Age, 1300–1600. Phoenix, 2013.


The Era of Transformation (1550–1700)

  • Abou-El-Haj, Rifa'at Ali (1984). The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te İstanbul.
  • Howard, Douglas (1988). 'Ottoman Historiography and the Literature of 'Decline' of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century'. Journal of Asian History. 22: 52–77.
  • Kunt, Metin İ. (1983). The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05578-1.
  • Peirce, Leslie (1993). The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508677-5.
  • Tezcan, Baki (2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-41144-9.
  • White, Joshua M. (2017). Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-503-60252-6.


to 1830

  • Braude, Benjamin, and Bernard Lewis, eds. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (1982)
  • Goffman, Daniel. The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (2002)
  • Guilmartin, John F., Jr. 'Ideology and Conflict: The Wars of the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1606', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, (Spring 1988) 18:4., pp721–747.
  • Kunt, Metin and Woodhead, Christine, ed. Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. 1995. 218 pp.
  • Parry, V.J. A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730 (1976)
  • Şahin, Kaya. Empire and Power in the Reign of Süleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  • Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol I; Empire of Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire 1290–1808. Cambridge University Press, 1976. ISBN 978-0-521-21280-9.


Post 1830

  • Ahmad, Feroz. The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics, 1908–1914, (1969).
  • Bein, Amit. Ottoman Ulema, Turkish Republic: Agents of Change and Guardians of Tradition (2011) Amazon.com
  • Black, Cyril E., and L. Carl Brown. Modernization in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire and Its Afro-Asian Successors. 1992.
  • Erickson, Edward J. Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (2000) Amazon.com, excerpt and text search
  • Gürkan, Emrah Safa: Christian Allies of the Ottoman Empire, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011. Retrieved 2 November 2011.
  • Faroqhi, Suraiya. Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire. (2000) 358 pp.
  • Findley, Carter V. Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922 (Princeton University Press, 1980)
  • Fortna, Benjamin C. Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire. (2002) 280 pp.
  • Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (2001)
  • Gingeras, Ryan. The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire. London: Allen Lane, 2023.
  • Göçek, Fatma Müge. Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change. (1996). 220 pp.
  • Hanioglu, M. Sukru. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (2008) Amazon.com, excerpt and text search
  • Inalcik, Halil and Quataert, Donald, ed. An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914. 1995. 1026 pp.
  • Karpat, Kemal H. The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State. (2001). 533 pp.
  • Kayali, Hasan. Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (1997); CDlib.org, complete text online
  • Kieser, Hans-Lukas, Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Seyhan Bayraktar, and Thomas Schmutz, eds. The End of the Ottomans: The Genocide of 1915 and the Politics of Turkish Nationalism. London: I.B. Tauris, 2019.
  • Kushner, David. The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 1876–1908. 1977.
  • McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire. Hodder Arnold, 2001. ISBN 0-340-70657-0.
  • McMeekin, Sean. The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923. London: Allen Lane, 2015.
  • Miller, William. The Ottoman Empire, 1801–1913. (1913), Books.Google.com full text online
  • Quataert, Donald. Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881–1908. 1983.
  • Rodogno, Davide. Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815–1914 (2011)
  • Shaw, Stanford J., and Ezel Kural Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 2, Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975. (1977). Amazon.com, excerpt and text search
  • Toledano, Ehud R. The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840–1890. (1982)


Military

  • Ágoston, Gábor (2005). Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521843133.
  • Aksan, Virginia (2007). Ottoman Wars, 1700–1860: An Empire Besieged. Pearson Education Limited. ISBN 978-0-582-30807-7.
  • Rhoads, Murphey (1999). Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 1-85728-389-9.


Historiography

  • Emrence, Cern. 'Three Waves of Late Ottoman Historiography, 1950–2007,' Middle East Studies Association Bulletin (2007) 41#2 pp 137–151.
  • Finkel, Caroline. 'Ottoman History: Whose History Is It?,' International Journal of Turkish Studies (2008) 14#1 pp 1–10. How historians in different countries view the Ottoman Empire
  • Hajdarpasic, Edin. 'Out of the Ruins of the Ottoman Empire: Reflections on the Ottoman Legacy in South-eastern Europe,' Middle Eastern Studies (2008) 44#5 pp 715–734.
  • Hathaway, Jane (1996). 'Problems of Periodization in Ottoman History: The Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries'. The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin. 20: 25–31.
  • Kırlı, Cengiz. 'From Economic History to Cultural History in Ottoman Studies,' International Journal of Middle East Studies (May 2014) 46#2 pp 376–378 DOI: 10.1017/S0020743814000166
  • Mikhail, Alan; Philliou, Christine M. 'The Ottoman Empire and the Imperial Turn,' Comparative Studies in Society & History (2012) 54#4 pp 721–745. Comparing the Ottomans to other empires opens new insights about the dynamics of imperial rule, periodization, and political transformation
  • Pierce, Leslie. 'Changing Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire: The Early Centuries,' Mediterranean Historical Review (2004) 49#1 pp 6–28. How historians treat 1299 to 1700

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