The Balkan Wars occupy a slim space in the historiography of 20th-century Europe despite their relevance for the sequence of events that resulted in World War I. The scale of destruction brought about by the latter is one of the reasons for this apparent lack of interest: anything that preceded pales in comparison. Another reason is the marginality of the Balkan states and the Ottoman Empire to Europe that is also reflected in the scholarship. This marginality carries over to the historiography of World War I as well, which only recently has become the subject of scholarly monographs focusing on the Middle Eastern theater that rely on sources from the region, and not only from diplomatic archives of the European Powers. Finally, there is the problem of “Balkanism,” or a particular set of European discourses about the Balkans that categorizes the region as innately ripe for ethnic conflict and violence. Therefore, violence in the Balkans was considered a self-evident phenomenon that defied scholarly analysis. Of course, we now know this not to be true, but this knowledge is relatively new and limited to the academy.

As for the Balkan Wars in Ottoman historiography, the field is quite far from saturated. Examples such as Ebru Boyar's Ottomans, Turks, and the Balkans (London: I.B.Tauris, 2007), and Isa Blumi and Hakan Yavuz's War and Nationalism (Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah University Press, 2013) notwithstanding, the Balkan Wars have usually been analyzed within the historical context of World War I rather than as events worthy of study in and of themselves. As Ginio points out, “The study of Ottoman experiences of the Balkan Wars . . . developed along two different paths that seldom communicated with each other” (p. 19). The first one concerned the role of the Balkan Wars as a catalyst in the transition from empire to nation-state, and the second presented them as a harbinger of mass violence and wars in the 20th century. However, Ginio's work regards the Balkan Wars neither as rupture nor interlude. Instead, he weaves together a narrative of the Balkan Wars on the home front as experienced by Ottoman society (mostly Muslims and Jews, and to a more limited extent Christians), which is simultaneously in dialogue with the recent literature on war and genocide in Europe. Ginio uses both archival and printed sources from the period, which requires expertise in Ottoman Turkish, Hebrew, Ladino, Arabic, and French. His treatment of printed material from the period is particularly original and exhaustive, covering the gamut from periodicals and memoirs to posters and commemorative stamps.

The book consists of six chapters, the first of which is a succinct account of the wars, and the political upheavals in the Ottoman capital. One of the overlooked events of the Balkan Wars is the exchange of populations between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of the Second Balkan War. The legitimization of the expulsion of a state's own citizens just on the basis of ethnicity was unprecedented and an ominous sign of subsequent policies towards religious and ethnic minorities in nation-states. Using Ottoman state documents, including ciphers from the correspondence of the “Special Office,” Ginio makes a convincing case that the Ottoman authorities did all in their power to expedite the transfer of a large number of Bulgarians as well as a smaller number of Greeks. Next, Ginio turns to the aftermath of the war, and Ottoman publicists’ reckoning with what had happened. In their writings it emerged that the idea of “civic Ottomanism” as a glue that would hold a vastly pluralist society together and prop up the legitimacy of the state had abjectly failed during the wars. While there were notable voices that suggested that the door should not yet be closed on Ottomanism—such as Eliya Elgazi's Haggadah de los Mujadjires (Refugees’ Haggadah), which “told the story of the Balkan Wars through the Ottoman prism while situating them in the larger narrative of Jewish history”—such voices were silenced by the rising clamor demanding revenge from enemies that now included the empire's non-Muslims. Ginio contends that the Balkan Wars “can be considered the critical moment” that such discourse became the norm, “paving the way for policies adopted later during the First World War and through the Turkish War of Independence” (p. 105). The discourse of betrayal and revenge constituted one of the principal elements of what Ginio calls the Ottoman “culture of defeat” with a nod to Wolfgang Schivelbusch's work on societies at war.

The other important element was “rejuvenation.” In the third chapter of the book, Ginio expounds on this theme, discussing the different ways in which the (Turkish) Ottoman public responded to the violent shake up from the wars. Calls for modernization following the models of Japan, and, surprisingly, Bulgaria, dominated public discourse. Modernization was mostly understood in terms of discipline and war readiness: a modern nation was one that was ever ready to defend itself with the combined efforts of every member of society. Mobilization of the entire population, including civilians, was an entirely new concept, but it took hold fast in the post–Balkan War Ottoman Empire. Women and children were not exempt from this effort, as Ginio demonstrates. He presents fascinating material attesting to the rampant militarization of society under the influence of aid societies such as the Red Crescent, popular literature, and the children's press as well as the Ministry of War. Children's upbringing and education constituted a significant element of the Ottoman “culture of defeat” according to Ginio, and he devotes a chapter to the issue. Children's presumed innocence did not exempt them from exposure to what we may call the ideology of revenge: classrooms had “revenge corners” that displayed horrific images of atrocities committed against Muslims in the Balkans, especially by the Bulgarians (p. 171). These images would presumably fill the pupils’ hearts with hatred against the enemy and motivate them to serve in the military to avenge their fellow Muslims. In addition to the more “formal” education, or rather indoctrination in the classroom, many children received training from paramilitary organizations such as the Türk Gücü Cemiyeti (The Association of Turkish Force). These were similar to sports associations in their emphasis on training and disciplining the body and the mind, but they were more explicitly designed to attract early recruits into the military, or tomorrow's soldiers who would protect the nation's honor.

In the penultimate chapter, Ginio takes up another element of rejuvenation, namely, building a national economy in order to ensure the empire's industrial development as a bulwark against future military losses. The Ottoman writers acknowledged that Ottoman elites had left the commercial sphere in the hands of non-Muslim merchants but still held them and their foreign protectors responsible for the nation's economic ruin, and by implication, its military defeat. As Ginio points out, early measures to “nationalize” the economy went back to the period before the wars, but this was the first time the “national economy” discourse was being used to depict non-Muslims as “enemies within.” The significance of this development cannot be understated as entire communities, rather than the commercial class, were blamed and punished for the failure of the Ottoman army, as in the boycotts against non-Muslim commercial establishments; the same principle served as the legitimizing pretext for the subsequent confiscation of non-Muslim property and their complete economic disenfranchisement, which continued well into the republican years. Ginio's discussion of women's organizations and the responses of the Jewish community of Dimetoka to the boycott are the most important empirical contributions of this chapter.

The author finally turns to the only moment of redemption of the Balkan Wars for the Ottomans: the recapture of Edirne from the Bulgarians. The event carried enormous symbolic meaning (Edirne had served as the Empire's capital before Constantinople) in addition to restoring precious lost territory. Having thus saved the nation's “honor,” Enver Bey, already famous as the “hero of liberty,” was now catapulted into an even higher plane in Turkish eyes as the “liberator of Edirne.” This reputation would guarantee him the title of Pasha and the position of minister of war, making him one of the most influential persons in the empire on the eve of World War I.

In his conclusion, Eyal Ginio weighs the importance of the Balkan Wars to shaping the politics of the coming years, and especially the defeat's role in “promoting policies of exclusion.” The evidence presented in the book fully supports his assessment that “probably the first and most profound effect of the defeat on Ottoman society was fear—fear of extinction” (p. 268). This is a crucial point that goes far in terms of explaining (but not justifying) the war crimes of the Committee of Union and Progress leaders during World War I; and explaining what Ronald Suny has called their “affective disposition” (They Can Live in the Desert but Nowehere Else, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015). The tremendous amount of material that Ginio has consulted for the book allows him the authority to inform us about the public mindset, rather than just the utterances of the political decision makers. The Ottoman Culture of Defeat is poised to become a classic work of reference on the Balkan Wars, not only for Ottomanists but also for scholars working on societies at war in general. For undergraduate instruction, sections particularly (but not only) from the chapter on “Children in the Ottoman Lecture of Defeat” would be useful. For more advanced students of late Ottoman history, the book is a must read.