This is my review of Lords of the Horizons : A History of the Ottoman Empire by Jason Goodwin.

Apart from the obvious fact of being Islamic, the former Ottoman Empire is fascinating in its method of operating on very different lines from the rest of Europe. Instead of a power structure based on feudalism and inheritance, it developed the “boy tribute” system which took “the finest Christian youths” into the Sultan’s service, up to the level of the Grand Vizier. The problem of jockeying for the one position which did involve succession was solved by legal fratricide: the Sultan’s heir, the only person allowed to inherit, was permitted to order the murder of any scheming brothers who might seek to supplant him. The Ottomans did not seek to impose their culture on conquered groups, but simply to gain loyalty and tax revenues: the Chians were only forced to convert their churches to mosques after they had consistently failed to pay their dues. The detailed and pragmatic organisation which enabled the Turks’ remarkable success eventually made for a sclerotic Empire, “the Sick Man of Europe”, which collapsed after the First World War, leaving little lasting trace of the “centuries of peace and discretion” it had created.

Jason Goodwin is clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about the Ottomans, and his quirky style may help to convey a sense of their exoticism to Western eyes. “Western camps were babels of disorder, drunkenness and debauchery. The Ottoman camp was a tea party disturbed by nothing louder than the sound of mallet on tent peg, the camels’ cough, the bubbling of cauldrons filled with rice”. Some readers will love this style, but I was continually irked by the endless passages of hyperbole, the questionable assertions – “if Tartars made the best slavers, then Circassians unquestionably made the best slaves” – the rambling Old Testament-style lists of places and tribes, the continual, often abrupt switching around in time and topic, with a lack of clarity as to dates and the location of places. Instead of likening Constantinople to the head of a dog when explaining its land and sea defences in the siege of 1453, why not just supply a map – unpoetic, perhaps, but effective? Sometimes the book reads like notes on different subjects rapidly slotted together without much editing.

“Across the higher ranges of the Balkans lay a tangle of Vlachs (shepherds) – the limping Vlachs, Black Vlachs, Albano-Vlachs, Arumanians, the Sarakatsans who roamed deep into Anatolia; some who protested they were not Vlachs at all, and others who pretended to be Vlachs, and some who gave wickedness a country, Klephtouria, and some …….who were thought dirtier than anyone in the world, and one (according to Eliot in the late nineteenth century) who built himself a summer residence in the hills and proved so houseproud that he repaired a broken window with a new piece of glass instead of a sheet of brown paper, “a proceeding, I believe, unique in the Levant”. And this is just an extract from yet another lengthy piece of verbiage which left me wondering why on earth I was bothering to read it.

The author seems to have made a conscious attempt to break away from a conventional academic history and create a kind of verbal collage to provide a sense of the character of the Ottoman Empire, but for me it is too fragmented and incoherent.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Romantic Revolution by Prof. Tim Blanning.

Although “by its nature, romanticism does not lend itself to precise definition”, this is a coherent and very readable introduction. Blanning even manages to interest a reader like me who finds romantic poetry and art too full of mawkish sentimentality and overblown emotion. My initial aim was simply to understand how romanticism arose as a backlash against the “cold and sterile” rationality of the C18 Enlightenment, which Blanning admits is an over-simplification.

Rousseau with his originality and “insistence on doing everything from the inside”, the “Sturm und Drang” movement in Germany and English poets like Blake and Coleridge all in their various ways attacked the Enlightenment developments of philosophy, science and mathematics as being too concerned with what could be measured and proved. Coleridge criticised rationally educated people who “were marked by a microscopic acuteness, but when they looked at great things, all became blank and they saw nothing”. He suggested that the souls of five hundred Newtons would go to the making up of one Shakespeare or Milton.

John Locke in particular was condemned for maintaining that at birth, the human mind was “white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas”. This seemed to put too much importance on development through the senses, involving social engineering, as opposed to Baudelaire’s view that romanticism lies “in a way of feeling”. It was also a focus on individual creativity from the inside out, which would give free rein to geniuses like “the romantic hero” Beethoven, or more arguably Wagner, who maintained, “Only religion and art can educate a nation – what use is science which analyses everything and explains nothing?”

The Enlightenment was also seen as hostile to history, a clear example of this being the French Revolution with its violence and imposition of a new order, treating society like a system for which the past could be erased.

With the downgrading of organised religion in the C18, art in its various forms could fill the gap, and the exploration of this forms the bulk of the book. Blanning writes of the composers who became the “high priests” of art; the poetic imagination which knows “how like a dream imagination is, how it loves nights, and solitude”, the same being applicable to writers and painters. The fascination with insanity, linked to the idea of “the mad genius” and the interest in folk art, folk dancing and folk songs are also covered. Even landscapes could become romantic, such as the Rhine and the Alps. It is easy to see how all this could feed the nationalism of German or Italian unification, fed by myths of past heroes.

In a final chapter linking to the present, Blanning shows how the force of technological change eventually forced romanticism to cede to modernism, giving the Enlightenment “the last laugh” – yet suggests in a somewhat rushed conclusion that there is now a renewed reaction to the culture of reason.

My only minor criticism is that the author makes too great a demand on the reader by flitting between examples without making the chronology clear. I like his heavy use of well-chosen quotations which create a vivid sense of romanticism in its varied aspects.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Landscapes of Communism: A History Through Buildings by Owen Hatherley.

4 stars for subject matter.

For what might be more accurately called “townscapes", journalist Owen Hatherley presents a detailed, at times indigestible, analysis of Soviet era architecture. Despite limited finances, he managed to roam quite widely with firsthand impressions of cities including Moscow, Berlin, Kiev during the recent demonstrations on the Maidan, the remains of Ceaucescu’s Bucharest, Warsaw, Vilnius, even Shanghai.

Each starting with a relevant quotation, the chapters are themed: the “magistrales” or wide boulevards cut through cities to permit state-orchestrated demonstrations of power; the massive, impersonal to the point of soulless suburban blocks of apartments to house large numbers of workers as fast as possible; “houses of the people” to encourage suitable social activities; palatial metros, some stations ironically built in Moscow at the height of Stalin’s Reign of Terror. There is even a chapter on quirky examples of improvisation: extra rooms tacked onto the sides of high-rise flats, and self-managed tower blocks in New Belgrade like the Genex, resembling two enormous linked grain silos. Themes are set in context by an initial introduction on the nature and aims of Soviet architecture.

I learned a good deal from this book. I had not realised how much Soviet styles varied in a relatively short period and liked Paperny’s useful if simplistic definition of “Culture One” Modernism, dynamic, with horizontal structures, low, long and linear, as opposed to “Culture Two” Stalinist, with its “monumental, solid, massive, immovable” vertical structures. These harked back to past grandeur for the frontages of “people’s palaces”, intended as spacious flats for ordinary workers as in East Berlin’s flagship project, Stalinallee, together with major buildings like Moscow State University with their stepped ziggurats and the “Socialist Realism” of the huge, stylised statues of patriotic workers.

I had not considered how “Utopian Soviet planners” rejected distinct urban quarters as a survival of “obsolete capitalist structures”, so that individuality was only possible through chance variations in a site. Even under Krushchev’s less extreme regime, decrees led to an “International Style” extending between the far-flung borders with Scandinavia, Afghanistan and Japan, with identical standardised plans down to the use of the same mass-produced doorknob.

Ironically, the “social condensers” constructed to provide under one roof a variety of activities to create good socialist citizens often became rare examples of creative, “one-off” architecture, such as Melnikov’s Rusakov Workers' Centre in Moscow.

I accept that for reasons of economy only small, grainy black-and-white photographs are used, but they are often not placed right next to the relevant text. Some buildings, like the famous Dessau-Törten cubic houses of Gropius are described without the inclusion of any photograph at all, which is like a radio programme explaining how to make a complicated origami bird. Hatherley’s prose is a little too leaden to get away with this. Key points may be lost in his verbose and sometimes opaque style. Hatherley’s lack of clarity matters because it is confusing. The omission of the construction dates of many developments discussed is also unhelpful.

Concepts like Modernism and Constructivism need concise definitions, and a glossary of terms (Potemkin village, phalanstery – both very interesting) and architects would have been useful for reference. The book would have been more effective with fewer examples, each with a better photograph and concise text. When I took the trouble to find buildings on Google images, I could understand much better what the author was getting at, but it is cumbersome to read a book in this way.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History by Catherine Merridale.

For enthusiasm and research, Catherine Merridale deserves five stars, but despite having visited Moscow both before and after the collapse of Communism, and been inside the Kremlin, I found this history hard going.

The opening chapters seem padded out, since there is little to say about the rural backwater of Moscow and the wooden fortification of the initial Kremlin when Kiev was the centre of activity for the region. In the later Middle Ages, the political rulers on one hand and religious patriarchs on the other are hard to distinguish, with the exception of Ivan the Terrible who tried without success to interest Elizabeth 1 of England in marriage.

For me, the book begins to come alive from the time of Peter the Great in the C17, through Napoleon’s destruction of Moscow to the impact of Communism and Putin setting out to harness the aura of the “red fortress” to cement his authority. Perhaps this is because it is easier to engage with people and ideas rather than often arbitrarily selected facts about buildings. I accept that this book may be invaluable for students, but for the general reader it is somewhat longwinded with a good deal of dry detail outside the entertaining anecdotes, which makes for a somewhat indigestible potted history.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

 

This is my review of Syria: A Recent History by John McHugo.

Drawing on firsthand experience of living in Syria, John McHugo has produced an informative analysis of the facts leading up to its tragic civil war. His detailed focus starts in the early twentieth century, just beyond the reach of living memory. When the Ottoman Empire crumbled after the First World War, a critical opportunity was missed to create, under King Faisal who had shown himself to be reasonably competent, an Arab state with the logical boundaries of Greater Syria, now divided between modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel and parts of southern Turkey. Instead, France and Britain were allowed to play imperial politics and carve up the territory along the notorious Sykes-Picot line, agreed in secret and, like too many other Middle Eastern borders, running across territories with no regard for ethnic groupings or geography.

Although McHugo accepts that an independent Arab state established in the 1920s might well have lapsed into tribal and religious conflict, and acknowledges the corruption which has fed unrest, he makes clear the West's part in inadvertently bringing about the current crisis. The disproportionate support for the Israeli cause without ensuring justice for the Palestinians has had complex consequences, such as the provocation of Israel's occupation of Syria's Golan heights, and the influx of Arab refugees into partly Christian Lebanon. This set up explosive tensions which Syria sought to resolve at the cost of antagonising the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rather than accept the Achilles heel of a weakened Lebanon through which Israel could attack Syria.

Instead of seeking a comprehensive and statesmanlike approach, the West confined itself to a somewhat blinkered preoccupation during the Cold War with attempts to gain the upper hand over the Soviet Union in the Middle East. "Once America had both Egypt and Israel as its allies as well as friendly relations with numerous other Arab governments….it did not need Syria" – which reacted by obtaining vital arms from Russia.

The author explains Ba'athism as an originally idealistic movement based on the three goals of unity, freedom and socialism – which of course must have been perceived as a threat by some Western powers. Yet when the Ba'ath party overrode elected politicians to gain power, it consolidated its position with nepotism and cronyism, thus undermining its founding ideals and reputation.

McHugh devotes two chapters to Hafez al-Assad, one of the pragmatic, ruthless secular Arab leaders who kept tribal and religious differences in check in the final decades of the C20. His son Bashir al-Assad seems to have attempted a more democratic approach on gaining office, but been driven by the pressure of events to adopt a more brutal and authoritarian approach, with less skill than his father.

McHugh ends on the bleak note that the most likely alternative to a victory by the regime is a descent into warlordism. The recent rise of Isis which has gained influence since the author went to press makes the effects of this anarchic outcome all the more grim. This book may sound like a depressing read at a time when Europe seems to be turning a blind eye to the political and economic chaos on its borders, but it has a positive effect in raising one's understanding of the complex chain of events, and increasing one's respect and sympathy for the Syrian people.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy by Jonathan Israel.

A prolific expert on the Enlightenment, Jonathan Israel tends to produce books of daunting length, so this is relatively short at about 240 pages. He is keen to prove that historians have tended to neglect, even deny, the profound ideological influence of radical Enlightenment C18 thinkers on the outbreak of the French Revolution. Only the diffusion of works by such writers as Diderot and d'Holbach, designed to achieve a revolution of ideas as the first step to real change, can explain the events triggered by the meeting of the Estates General in 1789.

Jonathan Israel explores in detail the "irreconcilable" division between the Radical and Moderate Enlightenments. The former believed in the use of reason, with a secular morality divorced from the distorting effects of superstitious religions, although some radical thinkers appreciated ethical Christian teaching. They called for equality, which required a representative democracy, freed from the self-seeking tyranny of kings and aristocrats, for tolerance and freedom of expression. To the moderates, this was at best over-optimistic and naïve. Tradition and the existing order were essential to maintain the fabric of society and God-given moral values. It is interesting to realise that the revered Voltaire belonged to this camp, corresponding with Frederick the Great of Prussia to deplore the idea of giving "enlightenment" to ordinary people who would be unable to cope with it. Similarly, the "moderate" Locke's support for the equality of the soul but not of physical status, meant that he could invest in the North American slave trade with a clear conscience and advocate the establishment of a new nobility in the Carolinas.

Ironically, members of the Counter-Enlightenment converged with the bloody French dictator Robespierre in condemning the Radical Enlightenment as a clinical, mechanistic approach to society, seeking to subvert natural human sentiment.

Frequent convoluted sentences and condensed ideas together with a tendency to list philosophers or their works call for prior knowledge and make for a challenging read. I found the best way to deal with the book was to skim through once for an overview, and then to work back through more slowly to grasp some of the more complex ideas, such as Spinoza's controversial and fundamental theory that mind and body are "one substance" or material, thus "reducing God and nature to the same thing, excluding all miracles and spirits separate from bodies, and evoking reason as the soul guide to human life, jettisoning tradition".

The result is that I have learned a good deal about the complexity of the Enlightenment and the conflicting ideas of its main protagonists. Writers on this fascinating theme tend to focus on different aspects, presenting contrasting views of philosophers and ranging over a wide field in a discursive and often confusing fashion, so piecing one's knowledge together from a variety of sources feels like gluing together a collection of shattered pots with intriguing designs.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars