ABSTRACT
The analysis of the wars of the Ottoman Empire between the mid-fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries tests the proposition that we can enhance our understanding of the origins of war. Embedded within the analysis, and integral to it, is a critical examination of the application of historical analogy to current issues of war and peace and of the role which theory plays in the process. Two primary English-language dictionary definitions, separated by nearly a half century, reflect both the theory of war and the historical experience of eighteenth-century Europe from which it was drawn: a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between political units. The Ottoman Empire’s wars between 1453 and 1606 are an attractive candidate for a number of reasons: Close enough to the present to be reasonably familiar politically and technologically, they are not as strange to our sensitivities as those of the medieval or classical past.
