Conclusion

This chapter sums up the arguments of the book, after a brief discussion of how Ottoman captivity during the First World War continued earlier legacies. It assesses the book’s lessons for our view of international law, of the Ottoman Empire, and of slavery. Law, it argues, was never absent from the story of Ottoman captivity; the question was which rules were seen as binding, by which individuals or institutions, how they interpreted them, what their sources were, and how they were enforced. The Ottoman law of captivity was a contingent product of its context, but nonetheless converged with practices in Europe. Thus we might look for changes in the eighteenth century, often seen as a period of stagnation or undifferentiated transformation. We also see active Ottoman state agency, in conversation with its own subjects’ claims, in shaping the international rules by which the empire was bound and foreshadowing later political developments.