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Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700. By Rhoads Murphey. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8135-2685-X. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xii, 278. Price $25.00.
This is a book every scholar interested in early modern warfare needs to read. Rhoads Murphey's study of the Ottoman military system is groundbreaking in several respects. First, unlike most Ottoman military studies, Dr. Murphey focuses on the marshalling of physical, fiscal, and human resources and on the impacts of these exactions on Ottoman society over time. In the best tradition of the now-mature "New Military History," this is a work of military sociology-a study of warfare less as tactics and strategy and more as operational process and uncertainty. In addition, with his intimate knowledge of Ottoman history, he reassesses a range of current historical truisms about the empire that have started to calcify into cliches. Third, Dr. Murphey's range of historical and linguistic talents allows him to make frequent comparisons with military conditions among the Ottomans' European, Russian, and Middle Eastern antagonists. Thus, scholars of Early Modern Europe must also ponder this book, given that fear of and fascination with the Sublime Porte propelled many of the military developments on the continent. After all, during this period, Istanbul controlled more European (and African) territory than any other Western sovereign.
Murphey begins by challenging the image of the Ottomans as a resolutely bellicose and expansionist "Jihadist enterprise". He points to many truces, formal and informal, with Safavid Persia, with the Catholic Hapsburgs, and the preference of many Sultans for a certain peace against the uncertainties of opportunism. (The Empire, for...