How has the study of early modern Central Europe changed in the past generation? Though there are a number of new developments we could highlight, to my mind one of the most significant shifts is our understanding of the Ottoman world and its impact on the Habsburg lands and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. A gifted group of young scholars has emerged who with an impressive array of linguistic skills seem equally at home working through the archives in Vienna, Budapest, and Istanbul. Tobias Graf is a member of this cohort, and his monograph, The Sultan's Renegades, is an important contribution to a growing body of literature examining the overlapping worlds of the Ottoman state and its Christian neighbors. Graf's particular focus are Christian converts to Islam who subsequently pursued careers in Ottoman service.

Chronologically, Graf has concentrated on three decades, from 1580 to 1610. As he explains, these are no arbitrary parameters, for in the aftermath of the battle of Lepanto (1571) and the conquest of Tunis (1574), the major site of the Christian-Ottoman rivalry shifted away from the Mediterranean to Central and Eastern Europe as competition with the Austrian Habsburgs took center stage. In this period of growing tension and eventually open warfare, there were many opportunities for Christian Europeans to convert, either by choice or necessity, and join the Ottoman cause. Graf bases his investigation on 137 conversion accounts that occurred during these years and through a combination of textual criticism, quantitative analysis, and an assessment of social networks presents a fascinating story that challenges an older narrative that emphasized the exceptional role these converts played within the Ottoman state.

One of the most challenging aspects of this project revolves around the question of sources. Most converts did not leave memoirs, diaries, or other types of egodocuments. To find and identify these cases Graf has carefully worked through the records of travelers, diplomats, and administrators. Where does one find such material? Once these converts had proclaimed their loyalty to the state and Islam, the Ottomans were generally not interested in their background and past. Europeans, however, were fascinated by these religious turncoats. Not surprisingly, then, the most significant repository for his study is in Vienna at the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. The question of sources—how to read, interpret, and deploy them—lies at the heart of Graf's study and is central to his argument. Many of the documents that he evaluates have in the past been considered “external” sources, the reports of interlopers who, however well-informed and perceptive, were observers outside the official state apparatus. Graf argues persuasively that such notions are problematic, for Christian-European diplomats were actors within Ottoman society and played roles even in its power structure.

Graf divides his study into four major divisions. After a useful introduction that charts the evolution of an Ottoman administrative-military elite from the beginnings of the empire until the middle of the sixteenth century, he investigates the broad nature of conversion in this world that extended from naming practices to new legal obligations. He continues with a useful case study of one of these converts, a certain Ladislaus Mörth, who as a member of an imperial embassy to Istanbul defected to the Ottomans. Here he brings to bear some of the observations of the confessionalization model so widely used to investigate religious change in Christian Europe. He then moves back to the larger picture with a thoughtful consideration of mechanisms by which the Ottomans integrated these new converts into their society. A final chapter explores old family ties, those relations the renegades maintained with those they had left behind in Christian Europe.

The Sultan's Renegades serves as an effective marker measuring how Ottoman/Habsburg scholarship has grown and matured over the past generation. Admittedly, the book has the feel of a revised dissertation. The notes are thick and the historiographical discussions substantial. Still, for scholars like myself whose familiarity with Ottoman historiography is limited, such coverage is welcome. Despite the book's more technical features, Graf's vision is broad. The Sultan's Renegades provides a marvelous overview of how Christian converts came into the Ottoman empire and were successfully incorporated into the state. Graf's most important achievement is how he regularizes this process. While contemporary European observers frequently portrayed these converts as villainous traitors whose very presence threatened Christendom, Graf notes that most of these individuals integrated quickly into their new society, leading normal everyday lives. They were not the empire's secret agents or a stealth force assembled to destabilize and eventually conquer the lands from whence they came. To use Natalie Rothman's phrase, they were transimperial subjects who ambivalently straddled the Ottoman and Christian worlds. More than anything else, they demonstrate the interlocking nature of these spheres and the porous nature of their boundaries.