How did the global circulation of modern technologies of warfare transform armed resistance? Focusing on the European territories of the Ottoman Empire, Ramazan Hakkı Öztan explores how revolutionary organizations navigated a world newly rich in material resources by the late nineteenth century. Unlike those who came before them, these revolutionaries operated in an increasingly connected global economy of violence that fed military-grade surplus weapons and newly invented explosives into their hands. Tracing commodity flows, Öztan profiles arms dealers, smugglers, and informers active in this economy of revolution. While revolutionaries tapped into transnational circuits, exchanged technical know-how, and engaged in calculated acts of violence, bureaucrats sought to dismantle black markets, gather counterintelligence, and wage their own campaigns of repression. Situating these connected histories across time and space, this global history explains the transformation of rebellion and imperial coercion by the turn of the twentieth century. This is a Flip it Open title and may be available open access on Cambridge Core.

‘Through an innovative approach to revolutionary violence in the Ottoman Balkans, the proliferation of its tools, and the individuals who fueled its illicit economy, this insightful study challenges conventional notions of violence as primarily a consequence of popular grievances or as linked to end of empire. Instead, it cogently argues that violence was a form of rival politics amid accelerated globalization and state repression.'

Houri Berberian - University of California, Irvine

‘This fascinating and deeply researched book takes us on a tour of the revolutionary landscape of the late Ottoman Empire. Öztan shows how novel munitions were gained and used by both sides in struggles for independence and domination, providing a new and important take on the material basis for revolutionary success.'

Jack A. Goldstone - George Mason University

‘Economy of Revolution probes revolutionary ferment in the Ottoman Balkans and the empire's adaptive responses to the late nineteenth-century radicalism reshaped by global currents. Through microhistories of internationally circulating means of violence, revolutionary flashpoints, and vivid biographies of conspirators and middlemen, Öztan dismantles enduring historiographical certainties with exceptional erudition.'

Hasan Kayalı - University of California, San Diego