The marked dynamism of Ottoman history as an academic subfield over the last few decades finds a clear reflection in the present volume. Editors Virginia Aksan and Daniel Goffman orchestrate a rich and impressive offering of the current scholarship in the Ottoman “early modern” period, which they define as beginning with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and ending with the establishment of the Tanzimat reforms in 1839. The editors link modernity itself with the emergence of the nation–state and rise of individualism, and it is to one or the other of these two components that, directly or indirectly, most of the contributors in this volume relate various Ottoman historical developments. However, the book is much more than this, as it asks new questions and draws important conclusions on a broad range of topics and approaches from cartography and diplomatic and military history, to political philosophy, historiography, and law, to the history of material culture, religion, leisure, and art. In its goal of charting a new, independent narrative of Ottoman early modern history, the volume takes significant steps.

The book is divided formally into five thematic parts. In Part I, “Mapping the Ottoman Empire,” Palmira Brummett writes the lone chapter, focusing on how boundaries of the empire were imagined by both Ottomans and non-Ottomans. Comparing European maps with those of Ottoman mapmakers such as Piri Reis (d. 1553/54) and Matrakci Nasuh (d. ca. 1564), she finds that both groups conceived of space in terms quite different from ours. Among the more interesting discussions is her focus on how maps of the 16th through 18th centuries bore a kind of imperial intentionality, in which lands not yet conquered could be included in the empire as well as those already possessed.

Part II, “Limits to Empire,” encompasses four essays that in various ways explore the terms by which imperial power was constituted and defended. Daniel Goffman argues that the Ottoman Empire, contrary to received scholarship, played a substantive role in shaping the “new diplomacy” that was practiced by Renaissance Italian states and that formed the basis for the international nation–state system. It was, for example, in interaction with Ottoman political and social structures and norms that the Italians innovated the concept of extraterritoriality and the establishment of permanent ambassadorships and consulships. Also countering the perception of the Ottoman state as passive and insular, Gábor Ágoston examines Ottoman strategies of intelligence gathering, specifically against the major European rival state, the Hapsburgs. He contends that the Ottoman authorities made use of a wide range of sources—from Janissaries, couriers, and frontier commanders to client states, foreign embassies, and even Ottoman merchant diasporas—to stay on top of events and plot imperial moves. Molly Greene studies the evolution of Ottoman naval control over the Mediterranean. After tracing vigorous Ottoman naval expansion until the Battle of Lepanto (1570), she examines later Ottoman–Venetian disputes over proxy corsair activity, revealing the porous and shifting borders between the two states and, more generally, the partial and uncertain extent of naval sea power. Finally, Virginia Aksan probes the limits of military reforms in the decades leading up to the Tanzimat. She argues that Ottoman restructurings of this period, far from being determined simply by international pressures and intervention, had an “internal logic.” While producing a new disciplinary regime through conscription, state policies ultimately drew lines of a constrained geographical and ethnic body politic that prefigured the Turkish republic.

Part III, “Evocations of Sovereignty,” considers internal dynamics that historicize and complicate our understanding of Ottoman literary and historiographical genres. Douglas Howard problematizes the nasihatname (“advice for kings”) genre with a close study of the early 17th-century works of the well-known scribe and author ʿAyn ʿAli. Witnessing what he saw as troubling changes in fiscal and administrative practices, ʿAyn ʿAli creatively adapted mythical elements in a treatise directed not so much at the sultan as at his peers in the Ottoman bureaucracy, an institution that was suffering a decline vis-à-vis vizierial households of the time. Baki Tezcan plots changes in the general reception of official chronicles commissioned by Ottoman sultans from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Counterintuitively, in the 16th century, when one might expect the centralized dynasty to dominate the shaping of the imperial historical narrative, official chronicles appear to have attracted little attention and agreement, but in the 18th century, when the dynasty had only a weak hold over state affairs, official histories enjoyed consensus support. Tezcan links this historiographical reversal to the long-term political and social transformation of the Ottoman state from a centralized monarchy to an oligarchy of vizierial households.

Part IV, “Boundaries of Belonging,” covers a range of themes having to do with social and intellectual history, addressing specifically the intersection of state and religion, material culture, individuality, and theological debate. Najwa Al-Qattan seeks to identify the set of key practices that distinguish the Ottoman law courts from Islamic pre-Ottoman legal tradition. In addition to the bureaucratization of the ulema, a process widely acknowledged by scholars, she stresses the “territorialization” of the shariʿa and the augmentation of the qadi's (judge's) responsibilities to include the archiving of legal documents. The later two processes, Al-Qattan insists, were inherently political actions that, respectively, expanded the scope of public jurisdiction among Muslims and non-Muslims alike and forcefully anchored Ottoman authority. Leslie Peirce explores the material world of Ottoman subjects, from household objects, clothing, and personal adornments to dwellings in both rural and urban settings. She contends that although material possessions contributed greatly to individual self-definition in Ottoman society, Ottomans followed closely the “ethical proportion,” with the institution of waqf playing a central role. Also examining individuation, Edhem Eldem studies how the content of Muslim funerary epitaphs in Istanbul evolved in the period from 1700 to 1850. Assembling a large database of gravestones for both Istanbul and for provincial cities, he argues that cemeteries in these years became “extensions of public space” in which Ottomans sought increasingly to project and preserve the individuality of the deceased through the mention of lineage, social network, profession, philosophical statement, and other elements of distinguishing information. Dina Rizk Khoury focuses on public polemical debates in 19th-century Baghdad generated by the recent emergence of two reform movements, the Wahhabis and a regional branch of the Naqshbandiyya sufi order, the Khalidiyya, both of which challenged the Ottoman Hanafi ulema establishment. Khoury contends that the nature of these debates, which dwelt on exclusion and inclusion in the Muslim community, reflect a new yet still transitional form of public discourse presaging later Ottoman political modernity.

In the final section, “Aesthetics of Empire,” Shirine Hamadeh traces the spread of public gardens in 18th-century Istanbul. Hamadeh argues that the mixing of elite and nonelite social groups in these expanding and proliferating spaces was both effect and cause of the breaking down of social boundaries and the creation of a growing public sphere linked to a dynamic middle class. She pays close attention to, on the one hand, the literary and artistic expressions of recreational life in the gardens, and, on the other hand, the attempts by state authorities to limit social mixing and conspicuous consumption in those spaces. The articles by Aksan, Khoury, Eldem, and Hamadeh together underscore the importance of the 18th and early 19th centuries as a moment of social and political transformation—but on terms wholly Ottoman, not as a “reaction” to Western influence and intervention.

With the high quality of the chapters and editing, one finds little to criticize, but one could take issue with the volume's thematic coverage. Reflecting on the defining components of modernity, one could also have plausibly included, in addition to the emergence of nation–states and individualism, the rise of industrial capitalism and a globalized economy. In accordance, one might expect to find in this volume contributions that more directly address how Ottoman populations experienced “early modernity” in economic terms. Peirce's chapter on material culture is a significant step in this direction, but recent work on, for example, lifetime malikane tax farms, salam forward contracts, and Ottoman monetary policy would have enhanced the breadth of the volume.

This criticism aside, the book signals an important moment in Ottoman historical studies. The sustained and collective effort embodied in this volume to combine philological precision, comparative perspective, and theoretical sophistication marks a stage of maturity and confidence in which old historical narratives can be challenged and new narratives constructed. This book should find a wide readership among historians of the Middle East, Mediterranean, Islamic world, and Eurasia. Advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students will find the chapters accessible.