Reviews for The Ottoman empire and European capitalism, 1820-1913

The average rating for The Ottoman empire and European capitalism, 1820-1913 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-09-22 00:00:00 Judson Spangler Şevket Pamuk’s The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism is a textbook example of an economic history work from its era. Concerned more with describing his eponymous topic than making an argument about it, the author provides a deeply quantitative analysis of the empire’s integration into the world economy over the course of a century. Only in the final chapter does he discuss some implications of his study. It is a short work, but relatively dense, although the broad concepts can be teased out without too much difficulty. Pamuk’s introduction is split about evenly between a review of Ottoman economic history and theory and a summary of the remaining chapters. His primary aim is “to examine some aspects and consequences of the penetration of world capitalism into the Ottoman Empire”, which sets the stage for more of a descriptive text than an argumentative one. His secondary goal is “to insert the Ottoman case into a comparative framework,” although he devotes less than one chapter to this. Nonetheless, he does make an important contribution in this regard by rejecting the binary categorization of economically peripheral countries as either “formal colonies” or part of the “informal empire”. Instead, he posits that the “informal empire” was divided into two types: those overseen by a single country and those where “rivalry” between two or more powers prevented one nation from seizing control. The author’s conjecture is that the Ottoman Empire fell into this latter category, and he intends to uncover what the implications of that were. The next five chapters focus more on providing a descriptive narrative of the Ottoman Empire than advancing his argument, although each contains key points that Pamuk summarizes in the opening paragraphs. Chapter 2 establishes a timeline of Ottoman foreign trade that is defined by fluctuation. The author demonstrates that these fluctuations were influenced much more by global trends rather than internal ones. He then turns to the subject of “terms of trade” and again comes to the conclusion that the Ottoman Empire was largely influenced by world trends for the period under consideration, and that favorable terms were more of a consequence of global markets than internal policy design. Chapter four examines the nature of foreign capital, which is a realm that Pamuk feels is influenced heavily by the Ottoman Empire’s status as a “rivalry” economy within the periphery. This, he argues, gave the Ottoman central bureaucracy more of say in determining how it was integrated into the world economy, even if it could not escape being overtaken entirely. Nonetheless, the imperial powers were still able to exert an impact on the Ottoman economy, but they were forced to negotiate with and adapt to both the bureaucracy and other empires. The next two chapters shift to an examination of the production side of the equation, with the first looking into changes in commodity production. In short, the author’s analysis argues that it expanded and created regional distinctions that were based on the fluctuations from the previous three chapters. He then turns to a case study of cotton textiles, which demonstrates a decline the corresponds with deindustrialization. Combined with the regional differentiation, these processes fractured the Ottoman economy. In lieu of an explicit conclusion, Pamuk uses his final chapter to turn to his secondary aim of placing the Ottoman Empire into a comparative perspective, although he does begin with a quick summary of the most important ideas from the previous chapters. After outlining the unique features of the Ottoman Empire, his comparison with similar countries indicates that the Ottomans were a good representation of changes that were occurring with the “rivalry” integration of periphery countries into the world economy. The author does well in summarizing his major points throughout the book, so one can get through and understand this work without an in-depth knowledge of economic history. The text does, however, assume a lot of analytical knowledge in terms of understanding the evidence and analysis, which is to be expected for a quantitative book of this nature, but can make it more difficult to see how the narratives flows and connects all of his ideas together. Overall, there is nothing wrong with The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, but nothing particularly outstanding outside of its historiographical relevance. Historians of the period may find this a good work for understanding some of the overarching economic trends of the era, but it will hold limited value to the lay reader or non-specialist.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-25 00:00:00 Mary Schuette Excellent. Still one of the top books on the subject