Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Dreams of Empire : A History of the Ottomans - Carter Vaughn  Findley
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

Dreams of Empire

A History of the Ottomans

By: Carter Vaughn Findley

Hardcover | 15 July 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover


$80.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $20.19 with

 or 

Available: 15th July 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

A new, comprehensive history of the Ottoman Empire from its beginnings in 1300 to its dissolution in 1922 written by North America's leading expert in the field. The Ottoman Empire was one of the mightiest empires in world history, ruling parts of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa for more than six hundred years. At its height in the sixteenth century, it was more formidable militarily, better financed, more highly centralized, and more efficiently ruled than any rival power. For centuries, the sultans who governed it were the most powerful and prestigious "defenders of Islam." At the same time, this Islamic empire accommodated religious diversity in a way Europe's Christian powers would not. Encompassing politics and war, economics and society, culture and religion, Dreams of Empire shows how across the centuries, the Ottoman state evolved from a ministate in the northwest corner of Anatolia (the Asian part of today's Turkish republic) to a world empire sovereign over lands stretching from Hungary to Iraq and Algeria. Subsequently, it experienced centuries of adversity, then recovery, then finally--although both diminished in size and buffeted by separatist nationalism in the Balkans and European imperialism in Asia and North Africa--a remarkable surge of reformist dynamism to fight for its survival. This reformist dynamism enabled the Turkish people to survive near destruction in World War I and re-emerge in the independent Turkish Republic. In addition to examining the state's central role in maintaining the empire, Carter Findley explores the prodigiously diverse communities residing in its sprawling lands, including nomadic tribes, settled agrarian communities, and religious groups of all sizes and types, including Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Charismatic Sufis, warriors for Islam, merchants in Cairo, compulsive travelers, a would-be Jewish messiah, revolutionaries, and pioneering women novelists all inhabit these pages. Incorporating a wealth of scholarship, primary sources, maps, and plentiful illustrations in both color and black and white, Dreams of Empire masterfully depicts both great issues and human stories of women and men whose deeds and misdeeds helped shape the epic history of this long-lasting, cosmopolitan empire.

More in European History

Talking Classics : The Shock of the Old - Mary Beard

RRP $36.99

$29.99

19%
OFF
The Shortest History of Scotland - Murray Pittock

RRP $27.99

$23.75

15%
OFF
Suicidal Empathy : Dying to Be Kind - Gad Saad

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Abandoned Women : Scottish Convicts Exiled Beyond the Seas - Lucy Frost
The Voynich Manuscript - Raymond Clemens

RRP $82.95

$60.75

27%
OFF
On the Shortness of Life : The Stoic Classic - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

RRP $24.95

$21.75

13%
OFF
Norse-Gaelic Paganism : Viking and Irish Myth and Magic - Annie Cúglas Humphrey
Kokoda : Updated Edition - Peter FitzSimons

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
The Gulag Archipelago : (Abridged edition) - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Anarchy : The Relentless Rise of the East India Company - William Dalrymple
The Spy in the Archive : How one man tried to kill the KGB - Gordon Corera
Battle of the Arctic : The Maritime Epic of World War Two - Hugh Sebag Montefiore
HOW TO KILL A WITCH : A Guide For The Patriarchy - Claire Mitchell

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Raven Mother : War, family and inheritance: a memoir - Jane Messer
Elizabeth II : In Private. In Public. The Inside Story. - Robert Hardman
Rasputin : And the Downfall of the Romanovs - Antony Beevor

RRP $55.00

$46.99

15%
OFF
Heroes : The myths of the Ancient Greek heroes retold - Stephen Fry
Revenge : Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors - Tom Bower
The State and Revolution : Twentieth Century Classics - Vladimir Lenin
The Wretched of the Earth : Penguin Modern Classics - Frantz Fanon
Discourses and Selected Writings : Penguin Classics - Epictetus