Nature, Power and the Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire was one of the greatest early modern world empires, stretching from the outskirts of Vienna in the west to the Caucasus Mountains in the east and from the tip of Arabian Peninsula in the south to the Ukrainian steppes in the north, covering an area of 3.81 million square kilometres. The Ottomans were remarkable not just for their political and military success but also for their desire and ability to understand, adapt, modify and manage different environments. This edited volume is the first collective effort to take an original look at the Ottomans through the lens of environmental history. In its wide-ranging essays, environmental perspectives illuminate diverse historical processes and events in the long history of the Ottoman Empire. The essays thus offer new answers to old questions - but also ask new questions - about the ways the Ottomans related to, depended on, thought about and interacted with the natural environment. It will appeal to anyone interested in the environmental history of one of the world's largest and most durable empires, the longest-lasting in the history of the Muslim world.

Der Band prasentiert einen Querschnitt einer jungen, gegenwartsbezogenen Turkeiforschung. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Spannung zwischen repressiver Staatsideologie und kultureller und gesellschaftlicher Vielfalt, zwischen der Verfestigung autoritarer, neopatrimonialer Strukturen wahrend der Regierungszeit der AKP unter Tayyip Erdogan und vielfaltigen Formen des Widerstands. Viele der Beitrage reagieren direkt oder indirekt auf die gewaltsame Niederschlagung der Gezi-Proteste im Juni 2013 und beleuchten aus einer interdisziplinaren Perspektive das Scheitern des neoliberalen Arrangements sowie die vehement gefuhrten Auseinandersetzungen um Geschlechterrollen und ethnische und religioese Identitaten.