Expertise and Sedition: Perspectives from the Ottoman Army of 1769

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Cover of Volume: DIYÂR Volume 6 (2025), Issue 1
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DIYÂR

Volume 6 (2025), Issue 1

Authors:
Publisher
Ergon, Baden-Baden
Copyright Year
2025
ISSN-Online
2942-3155
ISSN-Print
2625-9842

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Open Access Full access

Volume 6 (2025), Issue 1

Expertise and Sedition: Perspectives from the Ottoman Army of 1769

Authors:
ISSN-Print
2625-9842
ISSN-Online
2942-3155
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This paper examines the letters of the Ottoman Grand Vizier and commander-in-chief of the 1769 campaign, Yağlıkçızâde Mehmed Emin Pasha, in order to advance the understanding of Ottoman notions of expertise. Military expertise has always been seen as a fundamental part of discussions of Ottoman modernization, and its perceived absence prior to the Ottoman-Russian War of 1768–1774 is cited as one of the many reasons why the Ottomans ‘lagged’ behind. This article attempts to understand what constituted expertise for the Ottoman elite before the major catastrophes of the war and puts forward an intertwining relationship between perceptions of expertise and sedition.

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