This book was not written in order to catch popular favor at this time
of revolution in the Ottoman empire. All except the concluding chapter
was prepared some time before the 24th of July, 1908, and the entire
work was at that time nearly ready for the press. Much of the material
had been used in the Hyde Lecture Course at Andover Seminary and in
the Alden Lecture Course at the Chicago Theological Seminary. The
chapter, “Turkey and the Constitution,” was written since the overthrow
of the old régime, and appeared as an article in _The Outlook_ in
September, 1908. The book does not pretend to be an exhaustive study of
the Turkish empire and its problems. Such a work would necessarily be
encyclopedic in its size and scope.
The purpose from the beginning has been briefly and clearly to set
forth the various historical, religious, racial, material, and national
questions having so vital a bearing upon all Turkish matters, and which
now reveal the forces that have had so much to do in changing Turkey
from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional and representative
government. Reformations have never come by accident, and this moral
and political revolution in Turkey, the most sweeping of all, is no
exception. To one who traces the entrance and development in the
Ottoman empire during the last century, of reformative ideas in the
religious, intellectual, and social life of the people, the present
almost bloodless revolution presents no mysteries. It is but the fruit
of the seeds of intelligence, of righteousness, and of holy ambition,
sown in good soil and now bearing fruit after their kind.
J. L. B.
BOSTON, December, 1908.