Reviews in the TLS (4 September, 2020)
Reviews in the TLS
and elsewhere
The Times Literary Supplement (4 September, 2020) is of greater
interest this week. It contains a review of Sir Noel Malcolm’s recent book on
the Ottoman Empire by Margaret Meserve of the University of Notre Dame in the
USA. The work evidently covers the respect Europeans felt after 1450 for
Turkish arms, for the civic virtues – charity, sobriety and order –
underpinning Ottoman society and the contrast its power posed to Christian practices. It is, perhaps, a little
surprising that Meserve did not comment on the degree to which Ottoman rulers
encouraged men of low social origins, often converts from Christianity, to rise
on the basis of their talents. Malcolm was nonetheless clear on the hostility
of Catholics and Protestants to Muslim beliefs and on the willingness of
European states to seek diplomatic or military alliance with Ottoman rulers.
Even so, Europeans found themselves obliged to reflect on Ottoman Turkey in a
range of ways during the period to 1750.[1]
The other interesting piece in
the TLS was an edited version of
Theodore Rabb’s 1977 review of the translation of Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean
Martin’s work, The Coming of the Book,
first published in French in 1958. Ted Rabb was, by then, someone I had known
for almost a decade, initially through a shared interest in the affairs of the
Virginia Company of London and the career of Sir Edwin Sandys. Rabb was a
cosmopolitan figure, born in Czechoslovakia, educated at the University of
Oxford and established at Princeton University in the USA. He was a man and
scholar of considerable self-confidence and a wide understanding of early modern
European history. His review reflected on the profound influence of Febvre and
the Annales School on post-1945 historiography and the failure to translate
their major works into English. Febvre and Martin had been more interested in
improvements in the quality of paper than in technical breakthroughs in
printing. Publication of older conservative works acceptable to religious and
secular authorities actually inhibited the production of new ideas in their
view. But printing was essential to the spread of the Reformation and the use
of vernacular languages. Printing had been shaped by intellectual concerns
rather than the other way around. Since 1958, work on the history of
mentalities, especially of the lower orders, had been stimulated in France and
in the USA through the studies of Elizabeth Eisenstein, Robert Darnton and
Natalie Zemon Davis. Overall, Rabb concluded that printing could now be seen in
a richer context.[2]
Sadly, Theodore Rabb passed away
in January, 2019. But it was good to see his confident analysis and to hear
echoes of his distinctive voice once again.
5th September, 2020
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