The Sultan;: The life of Abdul Hamid II

by Joan Haslip

Book Overview

Sultan, The: The Life Of Abdul Hamid II, by Haslip, Joan This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 003006936X
• ISBN13: 9780030069369
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
• Length: 309 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Sultan

The book achieves a great job in depicting the political situation of Europe starting from the early eighteenth century until the end of WWI. The reader will find in Abdul Hamid's personality the lonely man who is trying to protect his sheep in a dark valley full of brutal and hungry wolves: The European Countries. Britain, Russia, France, Italy, Austria and finally Germany all have something in their best interest related with the Ottoman empire which was at the time being called "The Sick Man of Europe". As we witness, the first four of these countries have the same goal: Driving back the Turks out of Europe and even out of Anatolia while Germany had some intentions over the oil reserves of the region. We see that Emperor Wilhelm of Germany visits Abdulhamid twice in order to convince the sultan to build a railroad that would stretch from Berlin to Baghdad and Hijaz. In fact he becomes successful in this thanks to the support coming from the ministers that were close to the Sultan. However, as we shall see, this would eventually lead to hostililty between Britain and Germany and will be the main cause of the first world war. The Sultan delays the collapse of the empire 33 years, just the amount of time he has remained on throne. But when he was forced to abdicate, the Turkish empire engaged in WWI and collapsed just when the war ended. Sultan Abdulhamid deserves enormous credit for his intelligence and statesmanship. I think the author of this book has been quite successful in transmitting the Sultan's personality to the reader and in being impartial in his judgements.