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Warfare and History
Ottoman Warfare 1500-1700
Ottoman Warfare is an impressive and original examination of the Ottoman military machine, detailing its success in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Focusing primarily on the evolution of the Ottoman military organization and its subsequent impact on Ottoman society in a period of change, the book redresses the historiographical imbalance in the existing literature, analyzing why the Ottomans were the focus of such intense military concern.Several books have been written on the fiscal, technological, tactical, and political dimensions of Ottoman military history; little has been attempted, however, to recreate or evoke the physical and psychological realities of war as experienced by Ottoman soldiers. Rhoads Murphey seeks to rectify this imbalance, favoring operational matters and providing a detailed study of a number of campaigns: we are offered, for example, vivid descriptions of life in the trenches with the diggers at Baghdad in 1638, who dug a total of five miles at 50 yards a day. Murphey's analysis does not focus on the Ottoman's success or failure in particular campaigns per se; he focuses on understanding the actual process of how the Ottoman military machine worked.This long-awaited work will become the definitive study of Ottoman warfare in the early modern period, and will be invaluable to those studying the Ottoman Empire and early modern European history in general.
304 pages, Paperback
First published November 17, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 4, 2015
Historian Rhoads Murphey explores the various limitations affecting how the Ottomans planned, executed, and recovered from its wars between 1500 and 1700. Murphey uses Ottoman administrative records, shipping manifests, and contemporary literary sources to reconstruct the Ottoman soldier’s mindset during war and transformations in tactics, mobilization, and bureaucratic organization. Murphey pursues three goals. He corrects the misconception that Ottoman Islamic fanaticism precipitated wars with Europe, challenges Geoffrey Parker’s The Military Revolution by demonstrating that Ottoman and European armies maintained technological parity through 1700, and persuasively suggests that the Ottoman state retreated from Europe after 1684, not because it was technologically inferior to European armies, but because it faced a unified anti-Ottoman coalition, the Sacred League, whose combined forces and logistics outmatched the Ottomans.
Three conceptual parts guide the reader through current scholarly understandings of Ottoman battle and the phases of Ottoman warfare: preparation, wartime mobilization, and post-bellum reconstruction. Murphey assesses Ottoman military capacity while specifically treating the physical and psychological realities of armed combat for the average soldier and this combination allows Murphey to treat topics including grain and mutton provision, the camel’s load capacity, generalship, disease, the limitations of Ottoman firearms, and army ceremonies.
Murphey demonstrates that five “material constraints” inhibited Ottoman warfare (13). Technologically, Ottoman’s suffered from poor quality gunpowder that could not weather diverse climates. Financially, the Ottomans faced heavy financial overlay for updating fortifications, maintaining a cash-paid permanent army, and equipping the navy. Environmentally, the onset of freak weather conditions, scarce forage, and the agricultural cycle all circumscribed the campaigning season. Motivationally, soldiers’ finite morale and commitment was dependent on effective leadership. Politically, the Ottoman’s problematic relationship with peripheral polities, especially the Tatars, often limited the available manpower pool. Hence, the Ottomans actively pursued non-military options to placate provincial actors.
These factors defined Ottoman warfare and constrained large-scale mobilizations.
These constraints aside, Murphey’s main contention is that, by 1550, the Ottomans possessed a bureaucratic system for campaign planning and provisioning that outpaced European developments. Rather than gunpowder provoking a centralized “Gunpowder Empire,” Murphey envisions Ottoman military success stemming more from a decentralized bureaucratic system that hinged on a mixture of state, local, and private resources to feed and clothe armies on the march. In exchange for tax exemptions and economic opportunities, private contractors supplied camels, food, clothing, infrastructure maintenance, security patrols, and basic services for the army. Merchants, especially, benefitted from wartime economic opportunities. The Ottomans also avoided widespread rapacious pillaging by providing Janissaries with cash allotments and subsidies to purchase victuals. This bureaucratic system realistically sustained armies of 50,000 for small campaigns and 80,000 for large campaigns, while the menzil-hane stations and supplemental subsides and cash allotments achieved an economy of force that supplied armies throughout the campaigning season.
Murphey argues that this bureaucratic system made possible the Ottoman pursuit of power because it rested on both military pragmatism and fiscal realism. Tax codes and military quotas were consistently amended to coincide with economic realities; non-compliance with tax codes rarely provoked a violent state reaction. This flexible system fostered shared effort throughout the empire and produced shared rewards, furthering incentivizing compliance with imperial objectives (169). Wars stimulated trade, merchants realized economic opportunities, and war-torn provinces were actively reconstructed to regain economic vigor.
Murphey questions the underpinning combat motivations for the average Ottoman soldier and advances several factors. Antebellum military pageantry, communal feasting, and pre-Islamic and Islamic symbolism encouraged a communal ethic. Soldiers’ nerves were steeled for violent combat by pre-battle religious rites, vocal prayers, the beating of drums, and war chants. Commanders sustained motivation with equal treatment (e.g. granting leaves) and providing incentives, such as promotions and shared financial and honorific rewards. Although state ideology used religion to justify some wars, the average soldier’s religiosity rarely informed his decision to fight. Instead, most soldiers pursued wealth, honor and status through war service. Contemporary sources supply evidence of soldiers and commanders minimizing risk and maximizing the potential payoff of conflict, sometimes resorting to corruption or exhibiting a naked lust for booty. Therefore, Murphey effectively disputes the misperception that Ottoman soldiers were religious zealots or jihadists and posits instead a variety of psychological and material motives.
Overall, Murphey advances a persuasive, if limited, corrective to Parker’s The Military Revolution. Because Murphey elides any discussion of naval developments in the Ottoman Empire, a central component of Parker’s thesis, his study cannot address Parker’s claim that European hegemony mattered most at sea. Still, this is an important monograph that scholars of the Early Modern period and military historians must read.
Three conceptual parts guide the reader through current scholarly understandings of Ottoman battle and the phases of Ottoman warfare: preparation, wartime mobilization, and post-bellum reconstruction. Murphey assesses Ottoman military capacity while specifically treating the physical and psychological realities of armed combat for the average soldier and this combination allows Murphey to treat topics including grain and mutton provision, the camel’s load capacity, generalship, disease, the limitations of Ottoman firearms, and army ceremonies.
Murphey demonstrates that five “material constraints” inhibited Ottoman warfare (13). Technologically, Ottoman’s suffered from poor quality gunpowder that could not weather diverse climates. Financially, the Ottomans faced heavy financial overlay for updating fortifications, maintaining a cash-paid permanent army, and equipping the navy. Environmentally, the onset of freak weather conditions, scarce forage, and the agricultural cycle all circumscribed the campaigning season. Motivationally, soldiers’ finite morale and commitment was dependent on effective leadership. Politically, the Ottoman’s problematic relationship with peripheral polities, especially the Tatars, often limited the available manpower pool. Hence, the Ottomans actively pursued non-military options to placate provincial actors.
These factors defined Ottoman warfare and constrained large-scale mobilizations.
These constraints aside, Murphey’s main contention is that, by 1550, the Ottomans possessed a bureaucratic system for campaign planning and provisioning that outpaced European developments. Rather than gunpowder provoking a centralized “Gunpowder Empire,” Murphey envisions Ottoman military success stemming more from a decentralized bureaucratic system that hinged on a mixture of state, local, and private resources to feed and clothe armies on the march. In exchange for tax exemptions and economic opportunities, private contractors supplied camels, food, clothing, infrastructure maintenance, security patrols, and basic services for the army. Merchants, especially, benefitted from wartime economic opportunities. The Ottomans also avoided widespread rapacious pillaging by providing Janissaries with cash allotments and subsidies to purchase victuals. This bureaucratic system realistically sustained armies of 50,000 for small campaigns and 80,000 for large campaigns, while the menzil-hane stations and supplemental subsides and cash allotments achieved an economy of force that supplied armies throughout the campaigning season.
Murphey argues that this bureaucratic system made possible the Ottoman pursuit of power because it rested on both military pragmatism and fiscal realism. Tax codes and military quotas were consistently amended to coincide with economic realities; non-compliance with tax codes rarely provoked a violent state reaction. This flexible system fostered shared effort throughout the empire and produced shared rewards, furthering incentivizing compliance with imperial objectives (169). Wars stimulated trade, merchants realized economic opportunities, and war-torn provinces were actively reconstructed to regain economic vigor.
Murphey questions the underpinning combat motivations for the average Ottoman soldier and advances several factors. Antebellum military pageantry, communal feasting, and pre-Islamic and Islamic symbolism encouraged a communal ethic. Soldiers’ nerves were steeled for violent combat by pre-battle religious rites, vocal prayers, the beating of drums, and war chants. Commanders sustained motivation with equal treatment (e.g. granting leaves) and providing incentives, such as promotions and shared financial and honorific rewards. Although state ideology used religion to justify some wars, the average soldier’s religiosity rarely informed his decision to fight. Instead, most soldiers pursued wealth, honor and status through war service. Contemporary sources supply evidence of soldiers and commanders minimizing risk and maximizing the potential payoff of conflict, sometimes resorting to corruption or exhibiting a naked lust for booty. Therefore, Murphey effectively disputes the misperception that Ottoman soldiers were religious zealots or jihadists and posits instead a variety of psychological and material motives.
Overall, Murphey advances a persuasive, if limited, corrective to Parker’s The Military Revolution. Because Murphey elides any discussion of naval developments in the Ottoman Empire, a central component of Parker’s thesis, his study cannot address Parker’s claim that European hegemony mattered most at sea. Still, this is an important monograph that scholars of the Early Modern period and military historians must read.
February 27, 2023
Great brevity and focus for its subject matter. Deals largely with infrastructure, logistics, and strategies outside of the battlefield. Would have liked to have seen more depth in contemporary army composition and tactices.
March 26, 2017
Osmanlı ateşli silahları için kapsamlı bir eser.
February 17, 2015
Review pending.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews