"This is a valuable contribution to the history of the late Ottoman Empire, and it deserves to be widely read."--CHOICE "[A]t the close of the nineteenth century.the Ottoman state devoted an unprecedented amount of resources and energy to modern education. Many have seen this not as a surprising development, but a natural continuation of the westernizing reforms of the Tanzimat (1839-1876).In his lively account of the educational project of the Ottoman state, Fortna refuses to take for granted the state's level of devotion to modern education and points to the surprising degree of investment, both financial and emotional. Furthermore, in place of an uninspired evolutionary narrative, Fortna highlights the discontinuities that differentiated the Hamidian from the Tanzimat era, and which prove to be essential for understanding the period.[H]e invites us to adopt a critical attitude.and [approach] the late Ottoman history as.

an open-ended field of possibilities with room for alternative paths to modernity."--Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.