I wanted to like this book more than I did, and assumed that perhaps others were being unfair. This did not turn out to be exactly the case. My problems had less to do with a pro-Ottoman prejudice that I had anticipated from prior reviews. There is indeed a sympathetic stance towards the 400 years of Turkish rule in Greece, however, this is not the main difficulty that I had with the book.



The author makes a case that the Ottomans were no worse than earlier empires. The ideas of foreign conquest

I wanted to like this book more than I did, and assumed that perhaps others were being unfair. This did not turn out to be exactly the case. My problems had less to do with a pro-Ottoman prejudice that I had anticipated from prior reviews. There is indeed a sympathetic stance towards the 400 years of Turkish rule in Greece, however, this is not the main difficulty that I had with the book.



The author makes a case that the Ottomans were no worse than earlier empires. The ideas of foreign conquest and taxation were not new to the Turks, or to Greece’s former Roman masters, or to the Greeks themselves, who had subjugated the world from the Nile to the Indus nearly a millennium before.



In the time-honored tradition of empire, ​the Turks wished the conquered to toil and worship their God and govern themselves, as long as tribute to Istanbul flowed without trouble. Aside from the occasional impalement or flaying, the people adapted to the new rulers as they had to the old rulers.



This of course does not make empire justified, but it was truly part of the context of the times. Where the book faltered for me was in providing a fully coherent recounting of Greek history during the rule of the Ottomans. Maybe this would not be possible in the short space allotted and the long time frame under consideration.



The introductory chapters describe the poorly executed Fourth Crusade in which the Venetians sacked the Christian capital of Constantinople in 1204, instead of attacking the Muslim infidels in Jerusalem as was planned. Thereafter followed 250 years of Venetian presence in Greece, culminating in the Turkish conquests of Thessaloniki in 1430 and Constantinople in 1453.



Within less than a decade all of the Peloponnese was under the Ottoman rule. The Venetians were defeated at Cyprus in 1570, briefly redeemed themselves at Lepanto in 1571, but were reversed in the treaty in 1573. By 1669 the last Venetian stronghold in Crete was ceded to the Turks. So far so good.



But there are many other interceding chapters on the Orthodox Church and the Sultanate, Greek peasants and bandits, Turkish devshirme and North African corsairs. The clashes with Hapsburgs and Romanovs, Sultanate incompetence, income lost by the privatization of tax collection leading to the decline of the Turkish empire.



The plague, malaria, superstition, Church rejection of Enlightenment and lack of political unity and education contributed to Greek misery. Finally, there are two short chapters where the roots and outline of the war of independence are discussed, and another where an early 19th-century memoir of a revolutionary captain is synopsized.



This long thread becomes somewhat unraveled in the 24 brief but dense chapters, spanning only around 265 pages. The narrative switches between straightforward political/military history to comparative ideology and religion, travelogues, and memoirs mixed with the author's commentary.



Consequently, it is not strictly chronological, nor is it wholly thematic. This is not intrinsically a bad thing, and the juxtaposition of political and cultural history is generally a good thing. But in skipping around through so much so quickly a sense of coherence was lost, at least for me.



After the many critical comments above I would be remiss not to mention that I did learn a lot from this book. It is well annotated and provides sources for further study. There are few recent English language books on this subject, and I was happy for the introduction. I still plan to read David Brewer's separate book on the war of independence which received positive reviews.