The Travels of Reverend Olafur Egilsson: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on Iceland in 1627
By Olafur Egilsson (historical), Karl Smari Hreinsson and Adam Nichols (contemporary) Published in 1631 / 2016 248 Pages Thibault’s Score: 5/5 In 1627, Ottoman-funded Algerian pirates attacked Iceland. The exact motives behind the raid are unclear; however many historians speculate that the Ottomans were attempting to disrupt the European’s Atlantic trade in the New World. During this raid, an Icelandic protestant priest - Olafur Egilsson - was enslaved. He would eventually escape, and would write an epic and tragic history of his enslavement and escape. Egilsson’s entire family - his wife, and three children, were all enslaved. Eventually, he would ransom and rescue his wife. However, his children were sold off and never seen again. This book is a combination of a primary source - the journal of Olafur Egilsson - and modern historical commentary spliced in, to give readers additional context. It also includes several other primary sources; most notably several letters and accounts written by other slaves. Thinking about Ottoman pirates in Iceland is mind boggling. It shatters many geographical pre-conceptions that uninformed readers might have about the early modern era. The cross cultural aspects of this book are very interesting. This book is well written. It isn’t overly academic. It isn’t trying to prove a point; instead it is trying to convey a story. If you want to pick up a highly readable story about one of the most bizarre and tragic episodes of the early modern era, then I highly recommend it.
0 Comments
The Ottoman Age of Exploration
By Giancarlo Casale Published in December 2011 304 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 Did you know that the Ottoman Empire fought several battles against the Spanish in the Philippines? Did you know that a Portuguese-Indian-Omanese-Ethiopian alliance attempted to kick out the Ottomans from the Indian Ocean? Did you know that the Ottomans had trade outposts as far as China in the late 1500s? This book is guaranteed to make you seriously rethink your understanding of geography and historical economics. Starting in the early 1500s, Portuguese merchants arrived in the Indian Ocean via South Africa. Immediately, this triggered an arms race between Portugal and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans understood the value of the maritime silk road, and began rushing to establish many trading posts across the Indian Ocean. Like Portugal, Spain, Russia, England, and France, the Ottomans had their own colonial empire. Although Ottoman plans for colonies in the Americas, these were never carried out. Instead, the Ottomans purchased trading posts in the present day countries of Somalia, Kenya, Mozambique, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. They also influenced many states and kingdoms across Asia. For several decades, wars raged in between Europeans in the Indian Ocean and Ottomans. The Ottomans won many of these wars, and could easily have become the dominant power in the Indian Ocean. Instead, history had other ideas. The Ottoman Empire began suffering from internal conflicts. The Empire refocused inwards, closing itself off to the outside world. By late early 1600s, the last vestiges of Ottoman soft power in the Indian Ocean faded away, as decline set in. This made way for the Europeans to colonize nearly the entire world. The writing style of this book is neither good nor bad. It is not overly academic, nor is it overly simplistic. I recommend this book if you want to learn more about the history of colonialism. The Evil Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism
By Patrick M. Wood Published in November 2022 280 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This book can be seen as a sort of post-pandemic sequel to Patrick M Wood’s 2019 book Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order. For the most part, the book rehashes the exact same material covered in the first book, with some slight updates referencing the pandemic and war in Ukraine. This book placed a much greater emphasis on transhumanism than the first book. Overall, this book is much more biased and overly Christian conservative in tone than the first book. Instead of focusing on giving numerous clear case studies, he instead spends a lot more time sharing his opinions. Currently, the world is being reshaped by invisible technocratic forces. Most regulations no longer come from the nation states. Instead, international bodies like the IMF, OECD, and BIS are increasingly shaping international policy. These bodies are unique for several reasons. First, like all countries, they have their own corporate lobbyists backing them. Second, they have a distinctive “scientistic” ideology that proposes replacing moral judgements with scientific economic planning. Finally, many governments have already signed off significant portions of their national sovereignty to these international bodies. One part that I appreciated was that this book goes into far more detail discussing the history of the World Economic Forum. It also explains how WEF is funded, and how it indirectly influences policy by promoting academic research into specific fields. The topic, as usual, is fascinating. But this book is a clear degeneration compared to its predecessor. I do not recommend it. Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order
By Patrick M. Wood Published in November 2018 234 Pages Thibault’s Score: 4/5 This is an absolutely fascinating read. It was written in 2018, and it is remarkably prescient. It perfectly anticipates the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Technocracy is a political movement that originated in the 1930s. The original technocracy movement advocated for the scientific management of the economy. The goal of the technocrats was to create a centrally planned economy that would be managed by engineers using scientific data. By the time of World War Two, the technocracy movement petered out. However, many of its ideas would be adopted by the economic planners of FDR’s New Deal and of the wartime economy. This book traces how the obscure technocracy movement from the 1930s influenced modern political thinking, especially when it comes to global organizations such as United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the WTO, etc… Many current political and economic developments are no longer being primarily driven by the nation state. Now, most policy is being driven by a loose network of international para-governmental organizations (such as the UN), think tanks (such as the Brookings Institution), NGOs (such as the World Wildlife Fund), and consulting firms (such as McKinsey and Company). Democracy and traditional means of restricting governments are being bypassed using a wide variety of complicated mechanisms, the end result being the global homogenization of all legal and regulatory mechanisms. This book does a great job of explaining why governments no longer are responsible for policy making, and what ideas are driving this trend. I have one major criticism: the author is very critical of technocracy. As a result, he doesn’t do a very good job of explaining the pros of technocracy, only the cons. He comes from a conservative American Christian background, and doesn’t hesitate to use words such as “un-American” to describe various ideas and policies. Although his research is very good, and his findings align with things that I have seen in my professional life, his tone will be repulsive to the overwhelming majority of readers. As a result, his credibility suffers, and this book cannot be shared with the majority of people that I know. I wish that he had written a calm, collected, and unbiased book about technocracy. On one hand, I can find books that support technocracy. These accounts always use euphemisms and besmirch opponents as conspiracy theorists. On the other hand, I can find conservative or communist critics who are obviously biased. What I cannot find are neutral accounts that eschew euphemisms but simultaneously (at least on the surface) appear neutral. This is the best that I have found so far, so I will probably recommend it to a limited number of friends with many caveats. Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750
By Noel Malcolm Published in 2019 512 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 I only made it about a quarter of the way through this book before I decided to put it down. Malcolm’s main argument is that, by the mid 1600s, the Ottomans had become a pathetic shadow of their former selves. They no longer posed any real threat to Europe. However, European states found the threat of the Ottomans to be useful. Defense against the Ottomans justified religious persecution, raising taxes, military expenditure, etc… The Europeans would go as far as intentionally propping up the Ottomans in order to keep their threat alive. There is a lot of stuff out there about the rise of the Ottoman Empire, the conquest of Constantinople, the Balkan and Habsburg wars, and the age of Suleyman the Magnificent. There is perhaps even more stuff out there about the fall of the Ottoman Empire. However, there are very few books about the long boring period after the rise of the Ottoman Empire but before its decline. I was looking for a history of the Ottoman Empire during the late 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, so I picked up this book. This book doesn’t discuss the history of the Ottoman Empire, but rather European perceptions of the Ottomans. Like most modern historical works, it overemphasizes bias and under emphasizes understanding. The tone of writing is academic. I could see a potential audience for this book, but it wasn’t for me. The Enemy at the Gates: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe
By Andrew Wheatcroft Published in November 2010 384 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 This book is a fairly standard narrative history describing the two Ottoman attempts at capturing Habsburg Vienna in 1529 and 1683. It opens by highlighting the local geographical politics. Then, it gives broad explanations of the Austrian and Ottoman armies and tactics. Most of the book concerns direct hour by hour descriptions of the various battles and conflicts. Finally, some were devoted to the aftermath. Although the book was fast paced and the descriptions of battles were interesting, I remember remarkably little. You can only read about so many cavalry charges, famines, and last stands before it all starts to blur into one. The writing style was great, and at the moment, I found the book very interesting. But endless accounts of battles inevitably become drab. I never feel like I learn a lot when I read military history. Military history rarely gives me insight into the evolution of societies, the reasons why things are the way that they are, or the lives of people who lived in the past. Although it's a good book, unless you are specifically studying either the Habsburgs or the Ottoman Empire, there probably isn’t any good reason to pick up this book. |
Thibault SerletMost of my articles are book reviews, but I also write about many other topics. Archives
December 2024
Categories |