It is difficult to define “empire” precisely, because every empire was different. But for the Ottomans and their unraveling, Joshua Cohen’s recent novel, The Netanyahus, will do: “It was the function of empires to furnish a common identity to disparate peoples and whenever they couldn’t, they failed.” In 1922, this was to be the Ottoman lot.
From humble late-13th-century origins in modern-day Turkey, the Ottomans rose to take Constantinople in 1453, burying the eastern remnant of the Roman Empire, and by the 17th century ruled much of the Mediterranean basin. The question of how the Ottoman edifice collapsed is typically answered with reference to its beginnings and long, fascinating history. In The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire, Ryan Gingeras lands straight in 1918 and the empire’s final innings in the 20th century, revising the period’s perception as “postscript” and underlining its confusions, contradictions, and uncertain outcome.
