About this ebook
This book traces the decline and collapse of the Ottoman Empire from the failed siege of Vienna in 1683 through the founding of the modern Turkish republic in 1923. It covers the Tanzimat reform period of the 1840s and 1850s, the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II, the Young Turk revolution of 1908, Ottoman entry into the First World War, the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Allied occupation of Constantinople in 1918, and the Turkish War of Independence of 1919–1922.
Central figures include Abdülhamid II, whose rule combined modernization with a extensive internal surveillance apparatus; Enver Pasha, the war minister whose decision to ally with Germany hastened the empire's collapse; and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who led the defense at Gallipoli in 1915, organized the national resistance movement from 1919, defeated Greek, Armenian, and French forces between 1920 and 1922, negotiated a revised peace settlement, abolished the Ottoman dynasty founded in 1299, and led the secular reconstruction of the Turkish state until his death in 1938.
The book also examines the postwar partition of Ottoman territory by British and French officials in 1916, the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, and the continuing role of Ottoman history in Turkish politics and in the unresolved status of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish historical memory.
