Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

With extensive new material, this classic book – now in a second edition – challenges the current paradigm of the societal decline as inadequate for understanding the Ottoman society and state during this period. Rifa’at ‘Ali Abou-El-Haj reevaluates the established historical view of the Ottoman Empire as an Eastern despotic nation-state in decline and instead analyzes it as a modern state comparable to contemporary states in Europe and Asia.