This is an impressive scholarly collection of essays framed by a younger generation of (predominantly from southeastern Europe) Balkan and Ottoman historians. The collection de-centralizes analyses of imperial transformation, roughly from 1780 to 1914. The focus of this collection is resolutely on local perspectives. The collection fulfils its bill. It resembles the best of between-the-wars Annales scholarship and its consequential post-war impulse to plunge deeper into the history of the provinces to retrieve their identity and let them “speak” again. All contributors unite in a key aim of restoring some agency to Ottoman subject “locals” in their own transformation and in breaking down the existing dichotomy in historiography between empire and nation.

This agenda is introduced with aplomb by the book’s editors from Bulgaria, who offer a comprehensive critical survey of “broad trends” in modern scholarship (predominantly Anglo-US-western European) on the modern imperial versus ethno-nationalist history of the Balkans between the Napoleonic and the First World Wars. The editors, Ivelina Masheva and Boriana Antonova-Goleva, plus contributors Ivaylo Nachev and Masheva herself, explicitly reject views emphasizing how the Balkans were over-determined by the west and/or its “world-system.” The old diplomatic chestnut of “The Eastern Question” remains, but now it is re-populated with real (multicultural) people in real (multicultural) Balkan places who are far from puppets on imperial, or even national, strings. Antonova-Goleva’s contribution offers the extended example of local initiative in the building of the Rusçuk-to-Varna railway.

Responding to the inspiring example of Donald Quataert, all articles in this collection—such as Ivelina Masheva’s on the agency of local makers of commercial law and Hristiyan Atanasov and Florian Riedler’s on local manipulation in Niş and along the Ottoman side of the Danube, of Ottoman central initiatives, respectively of credit cooperation and transport infrastructure—delight because they offer important fresh perspectives on local agency, backed by solid local evidence. All contributors tend to “soften” received politico-economic concepts of empire-versus-nation by emphasizing the “personal” and “cross-cultural” beside the “national”: “Modernizers” were also so very Balkan or Ottoman and yet still local; Ottoman Christian subjects were attracted to Ottoman other-national educational opportunities (contributions of Yura Konstantinova and Orlin Sabev); institutions adapting and innovating much more nimbly than the “old” historiography once postulated. The influential accounts derived from (mostly Ottoman, in this case) central-state archives are often qualified in this impressive collection, now to be associated with voices back from the localities, showing flaws in historiographical centralists’ “fish [must] stink from the head” perspectives.

This is a strong collection of essays. Three other perceptive contributions examine foreigners in Ottoman service: Aleksandar Zlatanov’s on a Pole commanding Ottoman Cossacks (!), Tobias Völker’s on a commercial agent from Hamburg who managed Ottoman business regulation, and Yavuz Köse’s on a Prussian who founded an Ottoman law school. Dobrinka Parusheva’s especially important contribution offers an ambitious and persuasive re-evaluation of the economic history model of John Lampe and Marvin Jackson. Edhem Eldem adroitly focusses on the perspectives of non-ruling members of the Ottoman imperial family, Selahattin Efendi’s interest in “Modern” things and on the decline in polygamy. This volume should be included in any university library hoping to specialize in Ottoman and Balkan history.