critical analysis of the events; rather, it was a collection of available primary sources with minimal commen- tary by the historian. As Rubin points out, Uzunçarşılı was a historian in the positivist rather than the analyti- cal mold, which reflected the parameters of Turkish historiography at the time. Critiquing the “pedantic” nature of Uzunçarşılı’s contribution is a strange choice; it is stranger still to ask similar questions of the archi- val material and discuss questions surrounding culpa- bility and authenticity at great length. After concluding that “Uzunçarşılı, regardless of his pedantic work with the evidence, overlooked some ‘reasonable doubts’ stemming from both the documents and the context of the events in question,” Rubin goes on to note that the question “can be relevant only to the genre of judicious-legalistic history” (186). This contradictory logic leaves the impression that Rubin is boxing with his own shadow, missing his main target of “Ottoman legalism.” The significance of the decision to try the Yıldız case in a nizamiye court is the starting point of the book, but we never learn why the trial did not take place in Divan- ı Harb (a martial court), which it could have, considering the rank of the defendants and the nature of the alleged crime. Engaging with this question, and discussing simi- lar cases that were the product of the same legal culture, would have significantly strengthened Rubin’s case. Likewise, a discussion of the pre-Tanzimat precarity of high-ranking state officials’ positions—even lives, which could be summarily ended simply by sultanic de- cree—would also have added weight to his argument. Ottoman Rule of Law and the Modern Political Trial is a finely grained, micro historical analysis of a signifi- cant yet under-studied episode in Ottoman political history. It is based on solid research and the author’s intricate knowledge of the Ottoman legal system in the nineteenth century. It will be of particular interest to specialists on Ottoman legal and political history. İPEK KOCAÖMER YOSMAOGLU Northwestern University NAZAN MAKSUDYAN. Ottoman Children and Youth during World War I. (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East.) Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2019. Pp. xv, 210. Cloth $60.00, paper $24.95. “This was no longer a game. This was a real fight be- tween bordering neighborhoods. These fights between children, who were the citizens of the same state, but who were also descendants of races that remained seg- regated for centuries, were small-scale replicas of a soon to be bloody revenge” (97). Describing the daily effects of the independence movements in the early twentieth-century Balkans, Turkish journalist Şevket Aydemir recounts a street fight between children of different ethnic and religious communities in Ottoman Edirne. Foreshadowing World War I’s impact on the empire’s children, Aydemir articulates the critical interventions of Nazan Maksudyan’s Ottoman Chil- dren and Youth during World War I. One, war affected children’s everyday lives, and two, “the multi-ethnic and multi-religious structure of the Ottoman Empire and the contested meaning of the ‘nation’ meant that children of different ethnic groups had vastly different wartime experience, with the result that the ‘child’ was not a universal category” in the empire but depended on communal belongings (11). More generally, the au- thor rewrites the history of World War I in the Ottoman Empire from the viewpoint of Ottoman children, who deserve to be “at the center of the narrative” (14) and bridges the gap between the heretofore-isolated histori- ographies of World War I in the empire and that of the Armenian genocide. Childhood as analytical category and children as his- torical agents have become popular in the last three dec- ades. Children’s participation in and experience of war in particular has garnered scholars’ attention. Still, few works address children’s lives and meaning of child- hood in the Ottoman realm. Maksudyan here is a trail- blazer. With her first book, Orphans and Destitute Chil- dren in the Late Ottoman Empire, she is among the first Ottoman historians to take the history of childhood more seriously. In Ottoman Children and Youth during World War I, Maksudyan focuses on the war’s influence on children’s lives and showcases how children inter- preted and shaped their encounters with total war and genocide (12). Focusing on four groups—namely, chil- dren enclosed in state orphanages, boys sent to Germany on apprenticeships, urban youth associated with boy scouts and paramilitary organizations, and child survi- vors of the genocide—the author revisits an old ques- tion: Did children have historical agency despite the ab- sence of their voices in the archives? Maksudyan answers, “Children were legitimate partakers of, actors in, and witnesses to Ottoman political action and experi- ence in the war . . . Ottoman children acquired new iden- tities during the war years and discovered new forms of agency” (11). Historians of childhood will not find this surprising. The author largely relies on a traditional un- derstanding of agency as a rebellious and visible activity instead of as a continuum between resistance and com- pliance, as for example by childhood scholar Susan A. Miller. A broadening of the meaning of agency to more fully include acquiescence, especially when considering lives in disciplinary institutions, and a more systematic and full engagement with new debates in childhood his- tory and broader questions raised about children during war would have strengthened the work. In the Ottoman Empire, the Great War was an essen- tial catalyst in expanding child welfare policies, “as orphanages, clinics, and children’s programs signifi- cantly increased” (12). The politics, policies, and pro- cesses surrounding these new state orphanages are the focus of chapter 1. The Ottoman leadership confiscated AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW MARCH 2021 Middle East and Northern Africa 423 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/126/1/423/6244037 by Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin user on 22 May 2024