Ottoman Empire

Five hundred years ago Constantinople—long a bastion of the Western world—fell to the armies of the Grand Turk. G.R. Potter gives his account of how the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire finally disappeared.

To mark the 400th anniversary of his birth, UNESCO has declared Evliya Çelebi a ‘man of the year’. His Seyahatname, or Book of Travels, is one of the world’s great works of literature. Caroline Finkel celebrates a figure little known in the West.

The great trading companies that originated in early modern Europe are often seen as pioneers of western imperialism. The Levant Company was different, argues James Mather.

One of the last popes to play a major role in international affairs, Innocent XI defied Louis XIV, the Sun King, and played a decisive part in the defence of Christianity against the spread of Islam under the auspices of the Ottoman empire, as Graham Darby explains.

Bernard Lewis writes that the fall of Constantinople was no “victory of barbarism, but rather of another and not undistinguished civilization.” 

Roger Crowley finds that modern European concerns about Turkey are anticipated in an article by Bernard Lewis, first published in 1953.

The exploits of Tamburlaine, or Timur the Tartar, inspired the composition of one of the great English blank verse tragedies. But Marlowe’s fantastic personage scarcely outdid the fourteenth-century conqueror.

Between autumn 1855 and spring 1856, the attitude of Britain’s war leaders underwent bewildering change as their determination to bring the war with Russia to a desirable conclusion was buffeted by doubts about the commitment of the French, and fears about the motives of French policy, as Brian James reveals.

Christopher J. Walker asks whether the two religions that frequently appear locked in an inevitable clash of civilizations in fact share more than has often been thought.

Tony Rothman recalls one of the turning points of early modern history, when a heroic defence prevented the rampant Ottoman forces from gaining a strategic foothold in the central Mediterranean.