151 - Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy: History of the Ottoman Turks: From the Beginning of Their Empire to the Present Time. London, 1854-1856

Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy: History of the Ottoman Turks: From the Beginning of Their Empire to the Present Time. London, 1854-1856 First edition, large 8vo, contemporary leather over boards, spine faded, boards renewed, complete in two volumes, text clean and bright, overall in very good condition. Creasy, a lawyer and professor of history at University College London, wrote this book during the Crimean War, it was intended to educate a British public that was suddenly allied with the Ottomans against Russia. Creasy’s primary achievement was translating and condensing the massive, 10-volume German masterpiece by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall into a readable English narrative. He made German high scholarship accessible to the English gentleman's library. It would become the standard English-language history of the Ottoman Empire for decades. While it starts with the 13th century, Volume II, published in 1856, is a vital contemporary document. It analyzes the reigns of Mahmud II and Abdülmecid I, providing a historical justification for the Tanzimat reforms and go well beyond Hammer History. Creasy, as many contemporary British, believed the Ottoman Empire could be reformed.