LAUSR

In his conclusion, Eyal Ginio weighs the importance of the Balkan Wars to shaping the politics of the coming years, and especially the defeat’s role in “promoting policies of exclusion.” The evidence presented in the book fully supports his assessment that “probably the first and most profound effect of the defeat on Ottoman society was fear—fear of extinction” (p. 268). This is a crucial point that goes far in terms of explaining (but not justifying) the war crimes of the Committee of Union and Progress leaders during World War I; and explaining what Ronald Suny has called their “affective disposition” (They Can Live in the Desert but Nowehere Else, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015). The tremendous amount of material that Ginio has consulted for the book allows him the authority to inform us about the public mindset, rather than just the utterances of the political decision makers. The Ottoman Culture of Defeat is poised to become a classic work of reference on the Balkan Wars, not only for Ottomanists but also for scholars working on societies at war in general. For undergraduate instruction, sections particularly (but not only) from the chapter on “Children in the Ottoman Lecture of Defeat” would be useful. For more advanced students of late Ottoman history, the book is a must read.