Jihad and Islam in World War I

This books investigates the background and nature of the Ottoman Jihad proclamation, but also its effects in the wider Middle East. It looks at the German hopes and British fears of a worldwide rising of Muslims in the colonial empires. It also discusses the fierce academic debates caused by the Jihad proclamation, in which the 1915 manifesto of Leiden Islam scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (“Holy War Made in Germany”) played a key role. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched

The Progressive Republican Party of 1924-25: Reactionaries, Conservatives, or Moderates?

This article tries to make sense of the ideological position of the Progressive Republican Party of 1924-5. It does so by making two separate points. Firstly, it argues that, under the influence of the politics of the French Third Republic, the early Kemalists, like the Unionists before them, had a strong inclination to see all those who opposed their own revolutionary radicalism as reactionaries rather than as conservatives. Because conservatism was defined as reaction-in-disguise it could not gain legitimacy as a political current. The historiographical tradition based on the dichotomy of radical/reactionary that the Kemalists established during the single-party period had a long-lasting effect in the way the PRP was viewed. Secondly, the article asks the question what is the result if we free ourselves from the Kemalist view of the PRP as reactionary (or enabling reactionaries) and try to determine whether the party was in fact truly conservative. On the basis of the party’s own programme, the conclusion is that it is quite far removed from philosophical conservatism and can be better characterised as the moderate and liberal wing of the same radical current the Kemalists themselves formed part of

Strong armies, slow adaptation: civil-military relations and diffusion of military power

Why are some states more willing to adopt military innovations than others? Why, for example, were the great powers of Europe able to successfully reform their military practices to better adapt to and participate in the so-called military revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries while their most important extra-European competitor, the Ottoman Empire, failed to do so? This puzzle is best explained by two factors: civil-military relations and historical timing. In the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of an institutionally strong and internally cohesive army during the early stages of state formation—in the late fourteenth century—equipped the military with substantial bargaining powers. In contrast, the great powers of Europe drew heavily on private providers of military power during the military revolution and developed similar armies only by the second half of the seventeenth century, limiting the bargaining leverage of European militaries over their rulers. In essence, the Ottoman standing army was able to block reform efforts that it believed challenged its parochial interests. Absent a similar institutional challenge, European rulers initiated military reforms and motivated officers and military entrepreneurs to participate in the ongoing military revolution

Beyond national narratives? : centenary histories, the First World War and the Armenian Genocide

In April 2015 the centenary of the Armenian Genocide was commemorated. Just like the First World War centenary, this anniversary has provoked a flurry of academic and public interest in what remains a highly contested history. This article assesses the state of the current historiography on the fate of the Ottoman Armenians. It focuses on the possibilities for moving beyond the national narratives which continue to dominate the field, in particular through connecting the case of the Armenian Genocide to what has been termed a ‘transnational turn’ in the writing of the history of the First World War

Jihad and Islam in World War I: studies on the Ottoman Jihad on the centenary of Snouck Hurgronje’s “Holy war made in Germany”

The proclamation of Jihad by the Sultan-Caliph in Constantinople, after the Ottoman Empire’s entry into World War I, made the headlines. This book investigates the background and nature of the Ottoman Jihad proclamation in addition to its effects in the wider Middle East − both among the Arabs and the Turks, and among Sunni Muslims as well as Shi’ites. It brings to light the German hopes for and British fears of a worldwide uprising of Muslims in the colonial empires at that time. Moreover, it scrutinises the fierce academic debates caused by the Jihad proclamation, in which the 1915 manifesto of Leiden Islam scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (“Holy War Made in Germany”) played a key role

The Ottoman conscription system in theory and practice, 1844-1918

Donated by Klaus Kreise

The ottoman legacy of the Turkish Republic : an attempt at a new periodization

Donated by Klaus Kreise

'Ne Mutlu Türk'üm Diyene'' : Nation-Building and personality cult in the Turkish Republic

Donated by Klaus Kreise

Kazancı, Ali and ergün Özbudun (ed.), Atatürk :founder of modern state. London, C. Hurst and Co., 1981.

Donated by Klaus Kreise