Rival Empires
OVERVIEW
Empires were as important as states in early modern politics. We have already encountered several empires in this module, especially the Iberian and Islamic empires of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The seventeenth century is notable for the arrival of the English, Dutch and French as serious contenders for control over parts of Asia and the Americas. These empires, based around trade and plantations, began to shape the culture and politics of Europe. But Britain did not suddenly become the pre-eminent world power, and nor did other empires disappear. A good example is the Mughal Empire in South Asia, which expanded throughout the seventeenth century, developing a sophisticated economy and culture, and a political structure grounded in religious pluralism. Some emperors faced serious crises in the seventeenth century, and the Ming dynasty in China collapsed completely. But whether this amounts to a global crisis is an open question. This lecture looks at different kinds of empire that competed on a roughly equal footing in the latter part of the early modern period.
The seminar has a different format to other seminars, one that is geared towards the second assignment due in a few weeks' time. The assignment requires you to work out a position on a broad and debatable scholarly question. This calls for a different kind of reading than we have done so far for the seminars. You will need to read works that are quite broad in their coverage (not just a specific primary source or type of primary source) and that argue for a distinctive thesis (rather than just giving a factual overview of a topic). For this seminar, you will read three articles of this kind and use them to think about the question below.
QUESTION
- did the Ottoman Empire ‘decline’ after 1600?
ESSENTIAL READING
Bouquet, Olivier, 'From Decline to Transformation: Reflections on a New Paradigm in Ottoman History', Osmanlı Araştırmaları/The Journal of Ottoman Studies 60 (2022): 27-60
Kafadar, Cemal, 'The Question of Ottoman Decline,' Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 4, 1-2 (1997-1998), 33-35
Tezcan, Baki, 'The Second Empire: The Transformation of the Ottoman Polity in the Early Modern Era', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 29, no. 3 (2009): 556-72
You may also find this podcast with Baki Texcan useful as a guide to the third reading.
You may want to refer back to textbook chapters on the Ottoman Empire that you read in term 1, such as James Baldwin's 'European Relations with the Ottoman World,' in Kumin (ed), The European World.
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RECOMMENDED READING
Burbank, J., and F. Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (2010), ch. 5
Casale, G., ‘The Islamic Empires of the Early Modern World’, in J. Bentley, S. Subrahmanyam, and M.E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds., The Cambridge World History, Volume 6: The Construction of a Global World, 1400-1800 CE, Part 1: Foundations (2015)
Dandelet, T., The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (2014), ch. 2
Elliott, J.H., ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’, Past and Present, 137 (1992)
Elliott, J. H., ‘Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry: The European Perspective’, in Süleymân the Second and His Time, eds. Halil İnalcık and Cemal Kafadar (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), pp. 153-62
Baldwin, James, ‘European relations with the Ottoman world’, in Beat Kümin (ed.), The European World (3rd ed, 2018), 171-81.
C.K. Woodworth, ‘Ocean and Steppe: Early Modern World Empires‘, Journal of Early Modern History 11.6 (2007), 501-518
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘A Tale of Three Empires: Mughals, Ottomans, and Habsburgs in a Comparative Context’ Common Knowledge 12 (1) 2006, pp. 66-92.
FURTHER READING
The Mughal Empire
Alam, M,. and S. Subrahmanyam, eds., The Mughal State 1526-1750 (1998)
Athar Ali, M., Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture (2006)
Balabanlilar, L., Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia (2012)
Bhargava, M., ed., The Decline of the Mughal Empire (2014)
Dalmia, V., and M.D. Faruqui, Religious Interactions in Mughal India (2014)
Schimmel, A., The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture (2004)
The Ottomans
Aksan, V., and D. Goffman (eds.), The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Aksan, V. ‘Ottoman War and Warfare, 1453-1812’, in War in the Early Modern World, ed. Jeremy Black (London: UCL Press, 1999), pp. 147-75.
Aksan, V.. Ottoman Wars 1700-1870: An Empire Besieged (Harlow: Pearson, 2007).
Casale, Giancarlo, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford, 2010)
Texcan, Baki, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformations in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2012)
Barkey, Karen, Empire of Difference: the Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2012)
Faroqhi, S. N., (ed.), Cambridge History of Turkey: Vol. 2 The Ottoman Empire as a World Power, 1453-1603 (2012) (ebook) and Cambridge History of Turkey: Vol. 3 The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839 (2006) (ebook)
Finkel, C., Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire (London: John Murray, 2006).
Kafadar, Cemal, “The Ottomans and Europe: 1400-1600,” in Thomas A. Brady Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (eds), Handbook of European History, 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 1994)
White, Sam, 'Ottomans in Early Modern Global History,' Journal of Global History 6, no. 2 (2011): 345-49.
Woodhead, C., ed., The Ottoman World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012)
Russia
Dukes, P., The Making of Russian Absolutism 1613-1801 (1990)
Hughes, L., Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (1998)
Kappeler, A., The Russian Empire: a Multiethnic History (2001)
Kollmann, Nancy Shields, By Honor Bound : State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)
Shaw, D.J.B., ‘“A strong and prosperous condition” - the geography of state building and social reform in Peter the Great’s Russia’, Political Geography 18 (1999)
Taylor, B., Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations 1689-2000 (2003)
Southern façade of the Taj Mahal, completed in 1653 under the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. The building is in Agra, the main residence of Mughal emperors when construction began in 1631.
Peter the Great, who became the first Emperor of Russia in 1721. This 1698 portrait was a gift to the king of England, William III, an example of Peter's interest in Western Europe.