The Ottoman Empire took an unconscionable time dying. Since the seventeenth century, observers had been predicting the collapse of this so-called Sick Man of Europe, yet it survived all its rivals. As late as 1910, the Ottoman Empire straddled three continents. This book offers a provocative view of the empire’s decline, from the failure to take Vienna in 1683 to the abolition of the Sultanate by Mustafa Kemal (Atat?rk) in 1922 during a revolutionary upsurge in Turkish national pride. The narrative contains instances of violent revolt and bloody reprisals, such as the massacres of Armenians in 1896, and other ethnic episodes in Crete and Macedonia. It emphasizes recurring problems: competition between religious and secular authority; the acceptance or rejection of Western ideas; and the strength or weakness of successive Sultans. By exploring that legacy over the past three centuries, Alan Palmer examines a past whose effect on the present may go a long way toward explaining the future.