Visions of the Ottoman World in Renaissance Europe.

• Author: Umut, Hasan
• Position: Book review

Visions of the Ottoman World in Renaissance Europe

By Andrei Pippidi

London: Hurst & Company, 2012, ix+283 pages, 39.99 [pounds sterling], ISBN 9781849041997.

Over the past three decades, Ottoman studies continues to be enriched by new topics and methodologies, revising old nationalistic historiography that saw the Turkish nation as the sole owner of Ottoman history. Today, apart from Turkey, scholars from all over the world are integrating Ottoman studies into a larger global history.

The book written by Andrei Pippidi, chair of Medieval History at the University of Bucharest, is an important contribution to both European and Ottoman studies. While the Ottomans governed an important portion of Europe for centuries, literature dealing with the European experience of the Ottoman state and society is under represented. This book comes to fill the gap by aiming "to present the intellectual reactions of various Westerners to the advance of the Ottoman Empire in intellectual affairs." Pippidi focuses primarily on the political, economic, religious, and travel accounts produced by European intellectuals residing in Ottoman lands from the opening of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 to 1618, the start of the Thirty Years' War in Europe (p. 1).

The first chapter, entitled "An Archeology of Representations," introduces the general framework and the source material used in the book. The second chapter, "Late Medieval and Renaissance Views of the Ottomans," reads the most significant accounts of the Ottoman expansion produced in Europe after 1453. Pippidi shows how the initial response was replete with plots of revenge firm on uniting Christians against the Ottomans. However, in later centuries relatively neutral reflections centered on providing information about the Ottoman Empire began to emerge. The third chapter, "Three Thinkers and Their Disciples," provides the views of Machiavelli, Luther, and Erasmus, the three "most influential intellectuals of their time," on the Ottoman Empire (p. 65). The author convincingly argues that these early modern intellectuals saw themselves responding to Ottoman expansion by developing new theoretical and practical ways of mitigating political and sectarian upheavals haunting Europe. The fourth chapter, "After Erasmus," is about the reflections of European scholars that began to read the Ottoman expansion in less antagonistic terms. They hoped the Turks would eventually convert to Christianity, but for the...