Introduction

Abstract

Very often, the editors responsible for collections of articles will statethat they have joined originally disparate contributions into coherentpublications that resemble single-author books. Put differently, theseeditors claim to have established strong connections between the piecesentrusted to them by individual authors. Often these editors will go so faras to rename the articles at issue, now calling them ‘chapters’. By contrast,the present collection is consciously eclectic, and the editor does not aimat presenting the eight articles appearing here as parts of a unified whole.Rather, I hope that readers will be able to visualise, at least in part, thediversity of approaches to pre-1850s Ottoman social history as practicedtoday. Moreover, this collection should make visible some trends thatmay be relevant for the future, the historians at issue—with the exceptionof the present author—being either young scholars or else in mid-career.