International library of historical studies ;

"The financial collapse of the government in 1875 was a pivotal event in Ottoman history and in the modern history of the Middle East in general. Based on the extensive use of both financial and diplomatic sources, including the newly-available archives of the imperial Ottoman Bank, this economic history places Ottoman finances in the context of the larger political and diplomatic history of the Empire." "Christopher Clay explores the reasons for the Ottoman bankruptcy, examining in detail the lack of financial controls and the consequent gradual accumulation of debt, as well as the role of foreign bankers and the question of 'exploitative financial imperialism'. The result is a measured study, which provides important new information and insights into the workings of the Ottoman system."--Jacket.

This ground-breaking study represents a new twist in the already complicated debate on military change in the early modern period. Previous writers have for the most part defined a 'military revolution' focused on the seventeenth or even early eighteenth centuries. Eltis suggests that key developments in training, organization, tactics and siege warfare occurred in the sixteenth century and, taken together, these innovations constitute a military revolution, changing the face of war. In England, these changes came later than in the rest of Europe, and in Ireland later still. English writers, in their anxiety to spur their countrymen to adopt the new methods, produced some of the most useful manuals of sixteenth-century Europe. These, together with Italian, Spanish, French and German texts, form the main basis of David Eltis's study, allowing the ideas of contemporaries to be set alongside accounts of actual military conditions in explaining one of the turning points of world military development.