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NACÍ YORULMAZ, Arming the Sultan: German Arms Trade and Personal Diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire before World War I (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014). Pp. 256. $ 110.00 cloth.
The politics of armaments sales has recently become a major issue in the historiography of the pre-First World War era with Jonathan Grant's compelling overview Rulers, Guns and Money (2007) spearheading the way. Naci Yorulmaz's book builds on this historiography by narrowing the focus to a particular, but important, case study: the Ottoman Empire. It argues that before the outbreak of war in 1914 the German Reich gained a preeminent political position in the Ottoman domain largely as a result of a consciously undertaken policy of supplying the Porte with modern armaments. The bedrock of this policy was provided by the German state's decision to provide the Sultan with military advisers-the best known of whom is, of course, Colmar von der Goltz-whose ostensible role was to modernize and improve the Ottoman army. No doubt they conscientiously followed this remit, but they also performed two other valuable tasks that greatly facilitated the penetration of the Ottoman arms market by German firms. First, in what amounted to concerted industrial espionage, they supplied the German government and German armaments companies with invaluable inside...