From Wars Toward the Great War: The Ottomans and the Vortex of WWI - Michael Reynolds

Dr. Michael Reynolds, historian and author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918, explores the Ottoman Empire's losing struggle to preserve its existence from 1876 to 1914 to explain why the Ottomans made the decision to enter the Great War on the side of the Central Powers in 1914.
Presented at the World War I Historical Association Symposium, "The Coming of the Great War," November 8-9, 2013.
Recorded November 8, 2013 in J.C. Nichols Auditorium at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial.
For more information about the National WWI Museum and Memorial visit theworldwar.org

[@philbarnes6678]

When it comes to Q&A, I could listen to Dr Michael Reynolds talk all day!!

[@smallvoice2473]

What a great lecture. I learned so much. Thank you very much.

[@viggowiin]

Great lecture

[@Trinitypater]

Great speech and I loved your book!!! Read it twice 😊

[@Rudero3]

Had my heart when he said that the Ottoman Empire and Turkey are not synonymous. The Ottoman Turks are not a thing, they are the "Ottomans" and they spoke "Ottoman." Absolutely hate the term "Ottoman Turkey" or the "Turkish Empire." Hard to be a Turkish regime when half the sultans had Slavic or Greek mothers. In short, Ottoman = cosmopolitan, Turkish = if you're not Turkish, you don't belong.

[@aristoteles3843]

Euhm not really. Sultans spoke Turkish so your blood might be Serbian from mother side but you still grew up with Turkish culture and spoke Turkish. So Ottoman empire rulers were still Turkish. Turkish is not about race it's about culture and mainly about language. And in todays anatolia, blood still doesn't matter.

[@aristoteles3843]

Ottoman Turks are a thing. You also had Ottoman Armenians Ottoman Greeks etc. It's a way to be more specific. When you say Ottoman, people wont know who you are talking about.

[@Rudero3]

@@aristoteles3843 idk, when someone says Ottoman to me, I think the whole empire, not just Greeks or Circassians, but the "Turks" is too modern, too tied with nationalism. The Turkic peoples of the Ottoman Empire are a better label. Though most Americans don't realize the Turkish are not the only Turkic people. They're just the most well traveled, to leave Central Asia and successfully create a society that stood for 600 years is impressive.

[@Somali1971]

Most people don't know that even the current PM Turkaye Mr Erdogan originated from Gorgian ancestor.

[@cfrogge]

Sounds like someone's tapdancing around a certain Armenian action

[@mortenpoulsen1496]

really good

[@elpatron7916]

Uh really uh uh

[@gandydancer637]

40:40 "I don't know that the British had any major problems fueling their fleet [with oil]." Well, when the US entered the war they sent battleships to reinforce the North Sea fleet, and they sent older, slower, coal-fired ships precisely because the British could fuel them from domestically produced coal supplies rather than imported oil. So there's that.

[@brianrockwood2018]

In total war, which World War 1 was, you use whatever you have. Hell, my grandfather served on a destroyer that still used coal in WW2. When it comes to British oil supply during The Great War, yes they had to ration it a bit, but they still had more than any other nation besides the U.S.

[@gabirican4813]

Not to be too picky, but Walachia seems a little misplaced on the map.

[@pancakes3250]

Alright, it wasn't bad. I learned something.

[@kennethmorgan6516]

Why didn’t the British compensate the Ottoman’s for theft of their ships? The cost to the British of the war against the Ottomans certainly exceeded the cost of those ships.😊

[@ahmedkeremsayar]

Ottomans had a century of humiliation. people oversee this fact. that was such a traumatic period for Muslims of empire. being expelled massacred etc which transformed itself to late ottoman genocides. people had to kill to not to be killed.

[@kickassandchewbubblegum639]

it would be similar to what the british felt thru ww1 and 2 losing their entire global overseas empire and colonies becoming a minor country that is now poor...they have a very tiny middle class now and majority are in poverty barely able to pay rent right now

[@arianitramiqi3479]

@@kickassandchewbubblegum639listen again to the lecture. You do not seem to have gotten some important points…

[@davemacnicol8404]

Most cultures in history at some point were expelled, massacred, and or humiliated in one way or another. The fact that they then became the oppressors still isn't justified. This is the inherent issue. It's like it's an unwritten truth or something instead of a disgusting act of vengeance. If an entire people think a certain way, is that right? Or just? Simply because that's the way it's always been?

[@theskycavedin]

Reminder that the Balkans were part of the core of the Ottoman Empire because the Empire needed an endless supply of Christian slaves in order for their state to function and thrive.

[@Digmen1]

Most presenters use the words uh and um, it enables them to make their speeches last twice as long.

[@kidmohair8151]

I am not a subscriber to the notion that, "la plus ça change, la plus c'est la même". It seems Dr Reynolds is. Although "great power" machinations *are* still the root of all conflict, particularly over resources that said powers do not directly possess, the on-the-ground circumstances have changed if not dramatically, at least in substance. Empires in the physical sense are no more. They are economic now. The old aristos have been replaced by the new ones, the uber rich, who are as feted by our fawning media, as the old media of 19th-20th century feted the landed nobility. The toiling masses, those who create the wealth of the new economic nobility, have had an albeit brief taste of what a world *not* dominated by such leeches might be like. The biggest change has been in the dissemination of information, a genie that once released from the confines of its tube, cannot be put back in, to *not* coin a metaphor.

[@yolakin8210]

Uh, uh uh Uuuuuuh. Uhhhhh Ottoman Empire uhhhhh.