Onur Inal
Senior Researcher, University of Vienna
Post-Doc Researcher in Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna
PhD, History, University of Arizona
MA, Anatolian Civilizations and Cultural Heritage Management, Koc University
BA, Political Science and International Relations, Yeditepe University
Post-Doc Researcher in Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna
PhD, History, University of Arizona
MA, Anatolian Civilizations and Cultural Heritage Management, Koc University
BA, Political Science and International Relations, Yeditepe University
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Books by Onur Inal
historical trajectories of environmental change in Turkey. Despite the recent proliferation of studies on the political economy of environmental change and urban transformation, until now there has not been a suffi ciently complete treatment of Turkey’s troubled environments, which live on the edge both geographically (between Europe and Middle East) and politically (between democracy and totalitarianism).
The contributors to Transforming Socio-Natures in Turkey use the toolbox of environmental humanities to explore the main political, cultural and historical factors relating to the country’s socio-environmental problems. This leads not only to a better grounding of some of the historical and contemporary debates on the environment in Turkey, but also a deeper understanding of the multiplicity of framings around more-than-human interactions in the country in a time of
authoritarian populism.
This book will be of interest not only to students of Turkey from a variety of social science and humanities disciplines but also contribute to the larger debates on environmental change and developmentalism in the context of a global populist turn.
Papers by Onur Inal
historical trajectories of environmental change in Turkey. Despite the recent proliferation of studies on the political economy of environmental change and urban transformation, until now there has not been a suffi ciently complete treatment of Turkey’s troubled environments, which live on the edge both geographically (between Europe and Middle East) and politically (between democracy and totalitarianism).
The contributors to Transforming Socio-Natures in Turkey use the toolbox of environmental humanities to explore the main political, cultural and historical factors relating to the country’s socio-environmental problems. This leads not only to a better grounding of some of the historical and contemporary debates on the environment in Turkey, but also a deeper understanding of the multiplicity of framings around more-than-human interactions in the country in a time of
authoritarian populism.
This book will be of interest not only to students of Turkey from a variety of social science and humanities disciplines but also contribute to the larger debates on environmental change and developmentalism in the context of a global populist turn.
The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011
ISBN 978-1-107-00831-1 (HB) £60.00. 352 pp.
Environmental history is a relatively new sub-field in Ottoman studies. Although there is abundant material that can be brought to, the number of books devoted to Ottoman environmental history can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Sam White’s The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire is an important and pioneering work in this emerging field of Ottoman environmental history. In the book, White uses a panoptic lens of environmental history for understanding political, economic, and social changes in the early modern Ottoman Empire. He tells us the story of how one climate event, the so-called Little Ice Age, triggered the Celali Rebellions in the Ottoman Empire and nearly brought down the empire in the early seventeenth century. White goes on to examine the causes and consequences of the Celali Rebellions from an ecological point of view and though this offers us a new interpretation of early-modern Ottoman history. The central argument is straightforward: ‘in order to understand the empire’s successes, crises, and transformations, historians must take into account the ecological conditions of the early modern Near East and the profound impacts and repercussions of the Little Ice Age’ (p. 298).
The book consists of eleven chapters, organised in three parts. In Part One, called ‘An Imperial Ecology’, White analyses political, economic, and environmental dynamics of the Ottoman Empire between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period, usually referred to as ‘the classical era’ by historians, the Ottomans proceeded steadily, expanding both west and east, and developing from a tiny frontier chiefdom into an empire with vast territories in three continents. In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire shared the world stage with other mighty and wealthy empires. The author explores environmental dimensions of the Ottomans’ expansion and relates their success in territorial expansion to the imperial centre’s ability to administer flow of resources. He describes this system of mobilising resources as ‘imperial ecology’ (pp. 17–18). He considers the Ottoman Empire as a living biological entity, or an organism, composed not only of people and institutions, but also of mountains, forests, pastures, and rivers. White argues that in order for the empire to ensure its vitality, resources had to be harvested, requisitioned and managed according to supply; goods had to keep pouring from rural areas into cities and towns.
Part Two of the book covers climatology and opens with a lengthy discussion of the Little Ice Age and its impact on social and economic life in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the seventeenth century. White considers how the freezing winters of the Little Ice Age propelled thousands, even millions, of people into famine, exile and death. In this period, Ottoman government coped not only with political unrest, economic crises and social disturbances, but also with the perennial climatic risks. In the two final chapters of Part Two, White analyses some of the far-reaching implications of the Little Ice Age on the Ottoman people, and in particular explores the correlation between the Little Ice Age and the largest rebellion in Ottoman history. White proposes that the Little Ice Age, by causing droughts, famines and epidemic diseases, precipitated unrest and violence throughout the empire.
Part Three explores the recovery of Ottoman lands in the aftermath of the Little Ice Age and the Celali Rebellions. Here, White takes a long term perspective and reinterprets the shifts in landholding, agriculture and commerce in Ottoman lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He suggests that ‘The Near East had witnessed a long pattern of environmental crisis and protracted recovery’. By showing that a variety of factors caused by the Little Ice Age, from disorder and depopulation of countryside, to insecurity in rural areas, and the shifting balance of power between nomads and peasants, he seeks to establish a link between the Little Ice Age and the delay of the Ottoman agricultural and commercial revival.
White’s detailed work utilises a number of primary sources – especially ‘registers of important matters’ (mühimme defterleri) from the Ottoman Archives that report provisioning difficulties, weather conditions and burgeoning discontent – and correlates significant uprisings with broader climate events. It is this detailed archival analysis which is one of the real strengths of the book. Intellectually, White challenges anthropocentric history writing that has underplayed the role of previous climate related events. By showing how climate played a role in the ensuing drama, White reminds us to be aware of the fact that climate shared the stage with other actors which have been more often written about.
Sam White offers a fresh look at Ottoman history through the perspective of environmental history. He tells us the story of how the Ottoman Empire lived through a catastrophic climate event some four hundred years ago in a way never before told. Overall, the book is a valuable source to understand the effects of Little Ice Age in the early-modern Ottoman Empire. It will certainly be of great help to scholars and students who are in any way concerned with Ottoman environmental history.
ONUR INAL
University of Arizona