Last year I had the privilege of serving on the Albert Hourani Book Award Committee for the Middle East Studies Association. There were a number of excellent books submitted, but in the final analysis it was unanimous for a remarkable historical study by Sam White entitled The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), parts of which are available on Google Books. For an interview about the book, click here.

Below is the statement released by the committee:

Our committee reviewed over eighty books for this year’s Albert Hourani Book Award. Manycommittee members commented on the large number of high quality works from the incredibly rich and diverse body of nominations. Finally settling, unanimously, on a single work of superior scholarship could not have been achieved without the conscientious, diligent and professional attention my four fellow committee members gave to their colossal task: Michael Bishku of Augusta State University, Terri DeYoung of the University of Washington, Devin DeWeese of Indiana University, and Daniel Martin Varisco of Hofstra University.
The committee has chosen Sam White’s masterful work, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press as the 2012 recipient of the Albert Hourani Book Award. Sam White is an assistant professor of history at Oberlin College.
White’s book offers a compelling and nuanced interpretation of the decline of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the sixteenth century. The author’s assessment is based on an exemplary interdisciplinarity, as he weaves together environmental data with archival sources and chronicles in order to demonstrate how the outbreak of the Celali Rebellion in Anatolia in 1596 marked a turning point in Ottoman fortunes as the imperial systems of provisioning and settlement that defined Ottoman power in the 1500s began to unravel under the intense ecological pressure of the Little Ice Age. The result is a fresh look with new evidence, laid out in considerable detail, which fully unpacks previous narratives of Ottoman decline by demonstrating that Ottoman stagnation defeats were not simply a matter of political stagnation and decay but reflected the period’s turbulence and transformation born of environmental crises with devastating economic impacts.
This detailed study of a specific era will be of considerable interest to a wide range of scholars working on the economic and political history of the Near East and on Ottoman influence in and interaction with Europe, as well as students of global environmental history. White tells this complex story in accessible prose, with a lively– often gripping and occasionally even humorous style–that fully captures the drama of the story as sultans, military provisioning, and war are upstaged at various critical junctures by the dearth of Ottoman sheep, but in no way compromises the work’s academic rigor.

2012 Albert Hourani Book Award Committee
Michaelle Browers, Wake Forest University (chair)
Michael Bishku, Augusta State University
Terri DeYoung, University of Washington
Devin DeWeese, Indiana University
Daniel Martin Varisco, Hofstra University.