The decades after 1750 saw the Ottoman Empire undergo tremendous stresses that culminated in the first stirrings of nationalism among Christian subjects and an irrevocable commitment to reform by the Muslim state. By 1830, Serbs and Greeks had fought successfully for autonomy or independence, and Sultan Mahmud II had prepared the way for the Tanzimat by abolishing the Janissary Corps and other discredited institutions. In spite of the importance of this era for both Ottoman and Balkan history, marking as it does the transition from the pre-modern to the modern, scholars have shown remarkably...