E300 | Did the Ottoman Empire "decline" after an initial golden age of rapid expansion and military conquest? This question has long haunted the telling of Ottoman history. Critics note that describing centuries of Ottoman history simply as "decline" makes it seem inevitable that the Empire would be defeated in World War I, emptying the story of the contingency and nuance it deserves. How else might we describe the nature of political, economic, and cultural change in the later centuries of the Ottoman Empire? What other questions could we ask? In this episode, Baki Tezcan describes the period he calls the "Second Ottoman Empire," between roughly 1580 and 1826, not as a period of decline but as one of political transformation. His story radically remakes existing narratives about the nature and history of Ottoman political authority and governance and offers an important alternative to the "decline thesis" that has haunted Ottoman history for so long.
More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/02/rethinking-decline.html
Baki Tezcan is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and tens of articles and books chapters, and the co-editor of four festschrift collections. His next book is tentatively titled A Populist Reformation: Islam in the Second Ottoman Empire.
Susanna Ferguson is a Ph.D. Candidate in Middle Eastern History at Columbia University. She is currently working on a dissertation entitled "Tracing Tarbiya: Women, Gender and Childrearing in Egypt and Lebanon, 1865-1939."
CREDITS
Episode No. 300
Release Date: 17 February 2017
Recording Location: University of California, Davis
Audio editing by Chris Gratien
Music: Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Special thanks to Kara Güneş for permission to use the composition "Istanbul"
Bibliography courtesy of Baki Tezcan available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/02/rethinking-decline.html
