The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe
By Mark Mazower Published in November 2021 608 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 This dinosaur-sized book isn’t for everyone. It is very long and detailed. Finishing it was a project. It also is a little bit on the complicated side, so I wouldn’t recommend it to people who don’t already have a lot of background knowledge. That being said, I am very glad that I took that time to plow through this tour de force of Greek history. The Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire is one of the most fascinating events in 19th century history. It isn’t just important because it marks the birth of a major European nation and the end of the Ottoman Empire - it ties into nearly all major trends that were reshaping Europe at the dawn of the industrial revolution. I will summarize just some of the mind blowing details from this book in this review. Breakdown of Society: Sometimes, societies completely break down. This results in looting, rape, killing, and destruction of cultural heritage. Warlords emerge. In the 21st century, we have seen this when authoritarian governments collapse. Examples include Syria, Libya, and Somalia. In all three countries, a totalitarian state destroyed all forms of non-state organization such as private enterprise, religious organizations, and local communities. As a result, when the state collapsed, the vacuum became extremely dangerous. Greece during the time right before the war of independence is a perfect example of this. Greek Expats: Revolution was fostered by large communities of Greeks living outside of the Ottoman Empire. First, there were the many parts of Greece proper outside of Ottoman control such as the British Ionian Islands, the Venetian colonies, and areas controlled by Christian Balkan states. Then, there were cities such as Odessa in Russia with large Greek populations. These areas fostered the revolution, free from the scrutiny of Ottoman eyes. The Age of Revolutions: The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the South American wars of independence against Spain were all part of the broader “Age of Revolutions.” This was a time when the ideas of liberty, stoked by radical liberals, swept across the European world. Many Greek nationalists were influenced by these ideas. The Greek revolution would also be supported by foreign ideologues in places like France, Britain, and Italy. Many of the European philhellenes would be veterans of the Napoleonic wars hoping to restart the pan-European revolution. Philhellenism: Europeans romanticized Greece. The European image of Greece wasn’t shaped by the realities of its long term occupation by the Ottoman Empire. Instead, it was shaped by ancient legends from Homer, Aristotle, and Rome. As a result, many European liberals volunteered to help in Greece. They would get killed, ripped off, and scammed by the Greeks. Many were ill prepared for war, and were shocked by the atrocities that they saw there. British Banking: The British successfully captured the energy of the Greek revolution. Around 1822, they started encouraging British philhellenes such as Lord Byron to go to Greece. This diluted the ultra-liberal sentiment, making the philhellenic movement both more moderate and more legitimate. The British started issuing loans to finance some of the sides of the Greek war of independence. British money unified the many disparate warlord factions. As a result, the British had a major say when it came time to form an official Greek government, going as far as handpicking the first Greek monarch. Greece would become a sort of British puppet state after 1832 until late in the 19th century. The writing style is decent. It isn’t anything special; but it's clear and concise considering the topic. Mazower gives just the right amount of background information - not too much, not too little. The sheer length and complexity of this book makes it hard to recommend. If you are studying the right topics, and have the right background information, then this is a great book. I wouldn’t recommend it to a more casual reader though.
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The Travels of Reverend Olafur Egilsson: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on Iceland in 1627
By Olafur Egilsson (historical), Karl Smari Hreinsson and Adam Nichols (contemporary) Published in 1631 / 2016 248 Pages Thibault’s Score: 5/5 In 1627, Ottoman-funded Algerian pirates attacked Iceland. The exact motives behind the raid are unclear; however many historians speculate that the Ottomans were attempting to disrupt the European’s Atlantic trade in the New World. During this raid, an Icelandic protestant priest - Olafur Egilsson - was enslaved. He would eventually escape, and would write an epic and tragic history of his enslavement and escape. Egilsson’s entire family - his wife, and three children, were all enslaved. Eventually, he would ransom and rescue his wife. However, his children were sold off and never seen again. This book is a combination of a primary source - the journal of Olafur Egilsson - and modern historical commentary spliced in, to give readers additional context. It also includes several other primary sources; most notably several letters and accounts written by other slaves. Thinking about Ottoman pirates in Iceland is mind boggling. It shatters many geographical pre-conceptions that uninformed readers might have about the early modern era. The cross cultural aspects of this book are very interesting. This book is well written. It isn’t overly academic. It isn’t trying to prove a point; instead it is trying to convey a story. If you want to pick up a highly readable story about one of the most bizarre and tragic episodes of the early modern era, then I highly recommend it. The Ottoman Age of Exploration
By Giancarlo Casale Published in December 2011 304 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 Did you know that the Ottoman Empire fought several battles against the Spanish in the Philippines? Did you know that a Portuguese-Indian-Omanese-Ethiopian alliance attempted to kick out the Ottomans from the Indian Ocean? Did you know that the Ottomans had trade outposts as far as China in the late 1500s? This book is guaranteed to make you seriously rethink your understanding of geography and historical economics. Starting in the early 1500s, Portuguese merchants arrived in the Indian Ocean via South Africa. Immediately, this triggered an arms race between Portugal and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans understood the value of the maritime silk road, and began rushing to establish many trading posts across the Indian Ocean. Like Portugal, Spain, Russia, England, and France, the Ottomans had their own colonial empire. Although Ottoman plans for colonies in the Americas, these were never carried out. Instead, the Ottomans purchased trading posts in the present day countries of Somalia, Kenya, Mozambique, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. They also influenced many states and kingdoms across Asia. For several decades, wars raged in between Europeans in the Indian Ocean and Ottomans. The Ottomans won many of these wars, and could easily have become the dominant power in the Indian Ocean. Instead, history had other ideas. The Ottoman Empire began suffering from internal conflicts. The Empire refocused inwards, closing itself off to the outside world. By late early 1600s, the last vestiges of Ottoman soft power in the Indian Ocean faded away, as decline set in. This made way for the Europeans to colonize nearly the entire world. The writing style of this book is neither good nor bad. It is not overly academic, nor is it overly simplistic. I recommend this book if you want to learn more about the history of colonialism. The Evil Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism
By Patrick M. Wood Published in November 2022 280 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This book can be seen as a sort of post-pandemic sequel to Patrick M Wood’s 2019 book Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order. For the most part, the book rehashes the exact same material covered in the first book, with some slight updates referencing the pandemic and war in Ukraine. This book placed a much greater emphasis on transhumanism than the first book. Overall, this book is much more biased and overly Christian conservative in tone than the first book. Instead of focusing on giving numerous clear case studies, he instead spends a lot more time sharing his opinions. Currently, the world is being reshaped by invisible technocratic forces. Most regulations no longer come from the nation states. Instead, international bodies like the IMF, OECD, and BIS are increasingly shaping international policy. These bodies are unique for several reasons. First, like all countries, they have their own corporate lobbyists backing them. Second, they have a distinctive “scientistic” ideology that proposes replacing moral judgements with scientific economic planning. Finally, many governments have already signed off significant portions of their national sovereignty to these international bodies. One part that I appreciated was that this book goes into far more detail discussing the history of the World Economic Forum. It also explains how WEF is funded, and how it indirectly influences policy by promoting academic research into specific fields. The topic, as usual, is fascinating. But this book is a clear degeneration compared to its predecessor. I do not recommend it. Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order
By Patrick M. Wood Published in November 2018 234 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 This is an absolutely fascinating read. It was written in 2018, and it is remarkably prescient. It perfectly anticipates the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Technocracy is a political movement that originated in the 1930s. The original technocracy movement advocated for the scientific management of the economy. The goal of the technocrats was to create a centrally planned economy that would be managed by engineers using scientific data. By the time of World War Two, the technocracy movement petered out. However, many of its ideas would be adopted by the economic planners of FDR’s New Deal and of the wartime economy. This book traces how the obscure technocracy movement from the 1930s influenced modern political thinking, especially when it comes to global organizations such as United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the WTO, etc… Many current political and economic developments are no longer being primarily driven by the nation state. Now, most policy is being driven by a loose network of international para-governmental organizations (such as the UN), think tanks (such as the Brookings Institution), NGOs (such as the World Wildlife Fund), and consulting firms (such as McKinsey and Company). Democracy and traditional means of restricting governments are being bypassed using a wide variety of complicated mechanisms, the end result being the global homogenization of all legal and regulatory mechanisms. This book does a great job of explaining why governments no longer are responsible for policy making, and what ideas are driving this trend. I have one major criticism: the author is very critical of technocracy. As a result, he doesn’t do a very good job of explaining the pros of technocracy, only the cons. He comes from a conservative American Christian background, and doesn’t hesitate to use words such as “un-American” to describe various ideas and policies. Although his research is very good, and his findings align with things that I have seen in my professional life, his tone will be repulsive to the overwhelming majority of readers. As a result, his credibility suffers, and this book cannot be shared with the majority of people that I know. I wish that he had written a calm, collected, and unbiased book about technocracy. On one hand, I can find books that support technocracy. These accounts always use euphemisms and besmirch opponents as conspiracy theorists. On the other hand, I can find conservative or communist critics who are obviously biased. What I cannot find are neutral accounts that eschew euphemisms but simultaneously (at least on the surface) appear neutral. This is the best that I have found so far, so I will probably recommend it to a limited number of friends with many caveats. Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750
By Noel Malcolm Published in 2019 512 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 I only made it about a quarter of the way through this book before I decided to put it down. Malcolm’s main argument is that, by the mid 1600s, the Ottomans had become a pathetic shadow of their former selves. They no longer posed any real threat to Europe. However, European states found the threat of the Ottomans to be useful. Defense against the Ottomans justified religious persecution, raising taxes, military expenditure, etc… The Europeans would go as far as intentionally propping up the Ottomans in order to keep their threat alive. There is a lot of stuff out there about the rise of the Ottoman Empire, the conquest of Constantinople, the Balkan and Habsburg wars, and the age of Suleyman the Magnificent. There is perhaps even more stuff out there about the fall of the Ottoman Empire. However, there are very few books about the long boring period after the rise of the Ottoman Empire but before its decline. I was looking for a history of the Ottoman Empire during the late 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, so I picked up this book. This book doesn’t discuss the history of the Ottoman Empire, but rather European perceptions of the Ottomans. Like most modern historical works, it overemphasizes bias and under emphasizes understanding. The tone of writing is academic. I could see a potential audience for this book, but it wasn’t for me. The Enemy at the Gates: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe
By Andrew Wheatcroft Published in November 2010 384 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 This book is a fairly standard narrative history describing the two Ottoman attempts at capturing Habsburg Vienna in 1529 and 1683. It opens by highlighting the local geographical politics. Then, it gives broad explanations of the Austrian and Ottoman armies and tactics. Most of the book concerns direct hour by hour descriptions of the various battles and conflicts. Finally, some were devoted to the aftermath. Although the book was fast paced and the descriptions of battles were interesting, I remember remarkably little. You can only read about so many cavalry charges, famines, and last stands before it all starts to blur into one. The writing style was great, and at the moment, I found the book very interesting. But endless accounts of battles inevitably become drab. I never feel like I learn a lot when I read military history. Military history rarely gives me insight into the evolution of societies, the reasons why things are the way that they are, or the lives of people who lived in the past. Although it's a good book, unless you are specifically studying either the Habsburgs or the Ottoman Empire, there probably isn’t any good reason to pick up this book. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record
By Leslie Kean Published in August 2011 352 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 This was an extremely strange book. This book is a compilation of interviews with various retired high level government and military officials talking about their experiences with UFOs. The forward was written by Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff John Podesta. Whether or not the human race has made contact with extraterrestrials remains to be seen. However, it seems completely incontrovertible to me that high level military, government, and intelligence officials believe that earth has made contact with extraterrestrials. Most of the witnesses of UFOs interviewed in this book are military pilots and ground control staff. Almost all of the encounters described in this book were captured on various equipment (radio, sonar, camera, radar, etc…); and aren’t just eyewitness accounts. What is fascinating is that the officials who witness these various UFOs do not immediately assume it is simply a complicated or unusual weather phenomena or top secret technology from other states; but instead assume that they are extra terrestrial. If you are looking for a good introduction into the question of UFOs, then I would recommend this book as a good starting place. The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam
By Jerry Brotton Published in September 2016 338 Pages Thibault’s Score: 5/5 On its face, this book is a history of late medieval England’s relationship with the Ottoman Empire. However, when you dig deeper, it is much more than that. It is actually the history of the beginnings of international trade, global empire, and of a multicultural England. I’m not a big fan of the writing style. I think that the style suffers from academic pedantry, although it isn’t too bad. The writing style isn’t exceptionally clear or concise, but it isn’t bad either. The book covers a wide variety of different contacts in-between Elizabethan England and the Ottomans - military, artistic, and most importantly commercial. It immediately becomes very clear that by the 1500s, England and the Ottoman Empire were much more closely connected than the average person would imagine. The first, and most obvious, connection in between England and the Ottoman Empire is geopolitical. The two shared a common enemy: the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire. Previously, the Ottomans had briefly allied with another Habsburg enemy: France. The Ottomans had a history of alliances with various Christian powers such as Wallachian, Byzantium, Venice, and many others. In 1500, the European country with the largest population of Christians was the Ottoman Empire. From the English perspective, Islam was foreign; but from the Ottoman perspective, Christianity was well understood. Although geopolitics was the main initial driver of Elizabethan and Ottoman relations, it would have - by far - the smallest impact. Within decades of geopolitical contact, trade flourished. Many Englishmen found themselves in the Ottoman Empire; and many Ottomans in England. Very quickly, Turks become a staple of pop culture. The book goes on - at length - about how the Ottomans appear in fictional books, songs, and plays. Even the great Shakespeare writes extensively about Ottomans in plays such as “The Merchant of Venice” and “Othello.” Although I found this to be, by far, the least interesting part of the book, it still managed to captivate me. Finally, the most important connection between England and the Ottoman Empire is through trade. This trade will lay the foundation for later British colonialism. It begins with something I had never heard of: the English state-owned Muscovy company, which was created to attempt to access Middle Eastern markets through Russia. Although trade through Russia would prove ruinously expensive, the nature of state-owned trading companies (as opposed to more market driven initiatives as existed in Italy) would become the bedrock of colonialism. This book details fascinating encounters and adventures involving British merchants in Persia, the Indian Ocean, Russia, Crimea, Morocco, and sub-Saharan Africa. The stories of the brave merchants, who opened the world, is ultimately why I gave this book a five. I recommend reading this book to understand how trade opened up Europe. The King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers Published in 1895 160 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 The King in Yellow is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century by American author Robert Chambers. I bought the book for three reasons. First, it was a favorite of HP Lovecraft, who is an author who influenced me. Second, I physically liked the book (it's beautifully printed, pictured is my copy). Finally, I wanted to have some short stories that I could quietly read (not audiobook) while my daughter sleeps. I was hoping for some Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Instead, I got some mediocre sappy 19th century romantic fiction mixed in with discount Edgar Allan Poe tier spooky fiction. Because I don’t recommend it, this review will contain spoilers. The first story that I read, called The Repairer of Reputations, had an extremely interesting set up. It takes place in New York in 1920. Of course, because the book was written in 1895, it isn’t our 1920 - its 1920 as it was imagined by an American upper-class elite author from 1895. The story correctly predicts WW1, the militarization of America, the exclusion of Jews from immigrating to the US, and the redevelopment of New York city. It also makes some seemingly absurd predictions such as the creation of an independent negro state in Louisiana. I got a great dystopian vibes from it. However, the rest of the story fell flat. I then read a mediocre soppy romance story about two sculptors who loved the same French woman, and a boring lazy story about some guy who fell asleep during mass at a church and had a nightmare. Finally, the last story was about a painter who saw a creepy man staring at him from the window. It was a little bit more mysterious than the other three stories, and had some better Lovecraftian elements; however it still fell short. Overall I do not recommend the King in Yellow. |
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