Why study Ottoman history? What are the available sources? And how can researchers begin locating, reading, and interpreting these? The Cambridge Companion to Ottoman History provides a broad introduction to the field, offering readers accessible outlines of its varied methods and approaches. Bringing together contributions from leading researchers, the volume considers the theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges faced by Ottoman historians. Including chapters from specialists in areas ranging from intellectual history to labor history and gender history, the Companion critically examines prior developments in the field and indicates potential paths for future research. Beginning with a thorough grounding in the primary sources available, the Companion then turns to the perspectives and critical frames of the discipline. This volume is an essential teaching guide and an invaluable entry point to the breadth and the possibilities of Ottoman history.

This chapter examines the papacy’s positioning vis-à-vis colonization and decolonization, defined both as a political changeover from European to African governance and as a longer, subtler, and more complex process of rejecting European influence and authority in both the public and private spheres, including religion. It investigates Vatican approaches to Catholic missions in Africa during the colonial period, how successive popes navigated the political changes of decolonization, and how they sought to make Catholicism more hospitable to Africans. Finally, it underlines how Africans themselves, such as the prominent intellectual Alioune Diop, played a central role in instigating papal action to make the Church less Eurocentric and more welcoming to other peoples and cultures.

The Ottoman Empire left a rich and multilingual legacy in history writing, one that scholars are only starting to explore. Eclipsed for a time after the opening of the Ottoman state archives, chronicles attract intense interest not only as sources to be mined for facts, but for what these works can tell us about wider issues – from elite and popular worldviews to politics and patronage, literary history, intellectual horizons, and others. But if the study of the past through reading, writing, copying, and listening to works of history was hugely popular in the empire, Ottoman views of history are not entirely like our own, especially in their conceptual baggage. This chapter surveys some of these issues: What are the sources? How can we access them? What kinds of practical or methodological issues do they raise? Last, what paths do chronicles offer for future research in Ottoman studies?

This chapter reviews how gender and sexuality in early modern Ottoman society have been studied and analyzed in Ottoman historiography. Recent historical studies on Ottoman society and the everyday experiences of women and men reveal that individual experiences differ according not only to gender but also to class, age, ethnicity, and religion on a temporal and geographical basis. This chapter focuses on how scholars working on the archival sources made women, men, and children from different corners of the empire visible by mobilizing a “history from below” approach and utilizing sources creatively and comparatively to explore gender hierarchies, power relations, and sexual manifestations. It also discusses the representation of these hierarchies and relations as reflected in literary and narrative sources to reveal the diversity of gendered and erotic encounters and experiences. A closer reading of sources aims to provide a multifaceted representation of women from different classes, ethnicities, and religions, but also opens new questions on what constituted womanhood and manhood in various places and periods of the Ottoman Empire.

We associate “crusaders” with the medieval world and those who took part in military campaigns during the period 1095–1291, the “golden age of crusading.” This chapter examines why groups of men and women throughout history have been described as “crusaders.” For many historians, “crusaders” are not just those who fought against Muslims, but those who took part in papally inspired campaigns in various theatres-of-war against diverse enemies, for which they took vows and enjoyed special privileges. We further use the word “crusader” to describe those whom popes encouraged to take part in military ventures, for example against the Ottomans, over a much wider chronological period – from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In modern times, crusade rhetoric has also been a key feature of both Western and Eastern religious and political discourse. Hence the chapter explores how our idea of “crusaders” has developed since the original use of the word.

The pontificate of Leo XIII (r. 1878–1903) was decisive in shaping the Catholic response to modernity. His primary aim was to guide the Church in coming to terms with the modern world by making a clear distinction between unchangeable truths and other teachings that could be legitimately adapted to fit the scientific, democratic, and industrial world. The centerpiece of Leo’s approach was a Thomistic revival that included several elements: (1) Thomas’ view of the universe as an ordered hierarchy of being, governed by law; (2) Thomas’ view of natural law combined with Suarez’s “transfer theory of power” that permits a variety of legitimate regimes; (3) Thomas’ teaching on private property in service to the common good combined with Locke’s natural rights to property; and (4) a notion of the rights of workers as persons that points toward twentieth-century Christian personalism. I conclude by surveying the scholarly debates about Leo’s contribution to modern Thomism and Catholic social teaching.

During the eighth and ninth centuries the papacy extricated itself from the Byzantine world and allied with the Franks. The alliance secured protection from the Lombards and aided the formation of the first independent Papal State in Italy. Secular and ecclesiastical institutional structures inherited from late antiquity matured and created a recognizable medieval papacy. The popes supported the expansion of Latin Christianity in Scandinavia and eastern Europe. Peace brought prosperity to Italy and the popes both built and restored numerous churches and installed frescoes, mosaics, and liturgical fixtures all over Rome. Nicholas I, Adrian II, and John VIII made powerful ecclesiological statements that hinted at future claims. Toward the end of the period aristocratic strife in Rome foreshadowed the tumultuous tenth century.

This chapter places the history of late Ottoman labor within critical histories of empire, industrial development, and class/social movements. Departing from earlier perspectives dominant within the field that highlighted the politics of male, industrial, urban workers, it argues that the history of Ottoman labor encompassed a broader segment of the Ottoman population, including artisans, peddlers, female and child outworkers, and enslaved people. Although a substantial majority of those who worked in the late Ottoman world did not call themselves factory workers, they nonetheless experienced the full effects of wage labor, including dispossession, loss of control over means of production, and precarity. Ottoman women and children in particular bore the brunt of economic change through their involvement in seasonal and extremely exploitative sectors. In surveying recent studies of Ottoman labor, the chapter introduces the latest perspectives on Ottoman guilds, industrial survival, and labor unrest. It also discusses the role played by ethnicity and religion in shaping the politics of Ottoman laborers.

Popes’ relationship with modern media can be assumed as a prism through which the cultural, social, and political transformations of the twentieth-century papacy can be observed. Cinema, radio, and television were means through which the voice and the image of the popes were almost known simultaneously for the first time in history throughout the world. Internet and social media were exploited by the Holy See adapting the apostolate to the new way of communicating. Each pope’s choice to use new media reflected how they conceived the role of the papacy and more generally the Church. In other words, the adoption of the new media and therefore the way through which the papacy decided to communicate to its flock had ecclesiological, theological, and of course political reflections. The chapter provides an overview of the relationship between the popes and the means of mass communication from Pius XI to Francis I. It shows that even when the popes were imbued with an anti-modern culture, they grasped the opportunity to fulfill their task of Catholic propaganda instead of demonizing the new inventions.

The relations between medieval and early modern Jews and the popes rested on consistently applied canonical and Roman law principles, alongside Pauline theology, which was itself bifurcated. These principles were fundamentally restrictive, and the restrictions became tighter over time. To speak of a mild early Middle Ages, driven by Augustinian principles, which turned radically hostile after the First Crusade, is a distortion. Nobody mentioned Augustine until Innocent III. There were forced conversions even in the early Middle Ages. Similarly, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 was not a turning point, but a culmination. Subsequent attacks on literature were new, but not papally initiated. Beginning with Benedict XIII in 1415, a move to press conversion – without ignoring old limits, theoretically – began to grow, which culminated in Paul IV’s foundation of the Roman ghetto in 1555, intended be a cauldron of conversion achieved through repression. The policy failed.

This chapter focuses on the evolution of papal finances during the sixteenth century, a period of radical change, which was characterized by seminal moments such as the creation of the Monte della Fede (public debt) in 1526, the imposition of the Triennial Subsidy (an attempt to charge a universal direct tax) of 1543, and others. It also looks at the consequences that these changes brought about in the seventeenth century. After a brief literature review, the transition between the medieval and the early modern period is also explained, followed by an analysis of the public debt and venal offices. The chapter then discusses the relations between central and peripheral powers and ends with an overview of the role played by merchant bankers.

The modern world has as its central characteristic the claim of man’s emancipation from submission to ecclesiastical authority. Born with the Enlightenment, this claim extended from the cultural level to many areas of social life during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This process has found significant expressions in movements such as liberalism, socialism, and nationalism, which have marked the history of that period. It is commonly believed that only the Second Vatican Council has produced a turning point: the recognition of the “iusta autonomia” of earthly realities has led the Church from confrontation to dialogue with modernity. The historical judgment must be more nuanced. From the Enlightenment onwards, the papacy has sought to safeguard the submission of men to ecclesiastical authority, but it has also endeavored to adapt Catholicism to the needs of modern men for autonomy in order to be able to better communicate its message of salvation to them.

After the First Vatican Council, some believed that a council was not necessary any more: the Pope alone was able to govern the Catholic Church. John XXIII’s decision to convene a council was surprising in this context. Considered by some as an extension of Vatican I, which originally was to produce a whole teaching on the Church in which the pope was to be situated, the Second Vatican Council teaching situates the pope in the people of God and within the College of Bishops, proclaiming the doctrine of collegiality. The two popes of the council were going to modify the figure and the style of the papacy. John XXIII, by developing fraternal ties with the non-Catholic Christians invited to the council and who came in large numbers; Paul VI gave worldwide influence to the papacy through his travels to Jerusalem, India, and to the United Nations headquarters in New York, establishing relationships with non-Christians.

Much has been written on whether the Ottoman Empire was a terrestrial or a maritime one. Lost in this binary is what lies in between, namely the terraqueous dimensions of imperial rule. Enquiring into the interaction between land and water, the chapter transcends this divide and explores the ecological and economic continuum of the seas, continents, coastlines, islands, rivers, and lakes that compose the Ottoman world. Neither completely terrestrial nor simply aquatic, they are best conceived as hybrid spaces where land and water interact. We posit three Ottoman terraqueous zones defined by four rivers and four seas: the Danube, the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Adriatic Sea in the north domains of the empire; the Nile, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Red Sea in the south; and Mesopotamia, from eastern Anatolia to the Persian Gulf in the east.

A new wave of scholarship has put the environment at the center of an array of questions about the social, economic, political, and cultural history of the Ottoman world. This chapter argues that Ottomanists have only begun to harness environmental methodologies, which should be part of every historian’s toolkit. Using examples from this new scholarship, it examines the two-pronged methodology of environmental history as both material and conceptual history. It points to ways in which the Ottoman Empire contributes uniquely to the broader historiography of the environment, and how ecological frameworks can inform questions concerning the construction of space and nature of power in Ottoman society. Above all, it emphasizes that although the subfield of Ottoman environmental history is now well cultivated, there is still fertile ground for inquiry that may help us fundamentally rethink the history of the Ottoman world and challenge the Eurocentric tendencies of environmental history as a whole.