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Review

The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire, by Justin McCarthy. Oxford University Press, 2000. 224 pages. $24.95, paper.

This is one of the first books to appear in a new series that has a compelling theme—explaining the "endings" of a world order at a certain point in time. It documents what happened to the peoples of the Ottoman Empire as it declined and went out of existence right after the First World War. Other books in the series will address the fall of Rome, of the Mongol world empire, and of East European communism. In our current transitional stage of history, these books should be useful to the general reader and for the student. McCarthy brings to his work an exceptional grasp of the data which explains the fate of certain populations, such as Orthodox Bulgarians in post-war Macedonia, Armenians in Eastern Anatolia, Greeks in Izmir, and Turkish Muslims in Greece after the "exchange of populations" following the Turks' war for independence. In cases where the data is incomplete or unreliable, McCarthy says so, and explains why. He indicates who kept the better census records (the British in Palestine were more accurate than the French in Syria) and thus which are most credible.

What emerges is a brutal story of the effects of a series of wars, massacres, and population removals based on a Western European conception of "nationalism." McCarthy's purpose is not to document the development of that idea but to show the character that it took after 1850 and what its horrific effects have been, not only from 1912–22, but also to the present day. This nationalism is narrowly exclusionist. It is based on a narrowly defined set of characteristics that qualify one to be a member of a given "national" community: language, ethnicity, and a sense of a shared history—often determined by common hatred for a people who had oppressed the "nation" in the past. The ties that bind are "blood ties." One is rooted to a particular place and carries in his blood the fundamental essence, spirit, or "soul" of the nation. National goals are for maximal territorial expansion, to the farthest extent ever enjoyed by a people, or those identified as its forebears. The Bulgarian nation should face "the three seas" (the Black, the Aegean, and the Adriatic) because their medieval kingdom was imagined to have done so, and should include all of Macedonia because the Macedonians accepted the same Orthodox hierarchy, the Bulgarian Exarchate.

But the peoples for whom the wars of liberation were ostensibly being fought did not accept nationalism. The Ottoman Empire had proved to be an exemplary state for the inclusion of countless minority communities within its constituent parts. No people had to be "cleansed" because a minority group lived there. Many Balkan towns included several communal groups. The Turks' millet system provided for a good deal of local autonomy; each group managed its own affairs. McCarthy further believes that this served the needs of the Arab peoples quite well. If the Arabs had had the choice after the Great War, they would have opted for a big Arab state including Syria, Iraq, and Egypt rather than the small separate states that could be manipulated in the interest of their creators, the Europeans.

Constantly, from about 1850 onward, McCarthy sees the European tendency to intervene in local conflicts, such as the Crimean and Russo-Turkish Wars as a major cause of long-term problems in the Ottoman lands. The Powers imposed their conception of the nation state on brand new communities such as Serbia and Bulgaria and manipulated the minorities within and between them to their own advantage. They were committed to imperialism. President Wilson's rhetoric of self-determination was not taken seriously. At Versailles the powers pursued self-interest as they had at numerous congresses since Vienna in 1815. But Versailles was different because the goal of "revenge" was unmasked as the primary object of several nations. And the biggest loser of this approach was Turkey. Because England and France wanted Greece to inhibit the ambitions of Italy in the Eastern Mediterranean, and were enthralled by the Greeks' putative love of "freedom," the Greeks were allowed to retake Izmir in 1920 and to control most of Turkey's Aegean coast. The Turks would thus be punished for the war, the Greeks would be rewarded, and the Italians and Russians contained. In the process Turkey was ravaged—people, houses, productive assets, and infrastructure (Izmir itself was burned to the ground). McCarthy believes it was the Turks who suffered the most in the period of the war (1912–1922), with a net population loss of 1.2 million in Western Anatolia alone. But his account is balanced. "No one's hands were clean." The demise of the Armenian community in the East and the Greek community in the West followed as Turkey was overwhelmed in the frenzy of hatred and killing that marked the period.

McCarthy's strength is in documenting the extent of the cost of nationalism, imperialism and war. He is a master of the population dynamics of the age. He believes that the looser organizational ties of the Ottoman state could have better ensured the well being of the peoples of the empire than the new nation states. He is partial to the efforts of the reformers of the Tanzimat years and after, believing that they put into place the foundations of a modern state. This book is exceptional for its detailed attention to the fate of the numerous Ottoman Peoples, and also for its unique periodization and selection of topics. It is marked by McCarthy's sympathetic treatment of an empire that endured for over 600 years and by his balanced consideration for those caught up in its demise.


Choate Rosemary Hall Wallingford, CT	Richard S. Stewart

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