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Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, by Justin McCarthy. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995. xv + 340 pages. Append. to p. 346. Bibl. to p. 357. Index to p. 368. $35.
Reviewed by Howard A. Reed
This book documents the hitherto inexcusably neglected fact that, in a wide arc around the Black Sea inhabited primarily by Ottoman Turks,
Between 1821 and 1922, more than five million Muslims were driven from their lands. Five and one-half million Muslims died, some of them killed in wars, others perishing as refugees from starvation and disease (p. 1).
They died mainly at the hands of Christians. This is original, powerful history. It fills a basic gap in the historiography of the region irresponsibly overlooked by previous historians. It hauntingly foreshadows contemporary tragedies in Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Chechnia, Iraq, Kurdistan, Palestine, the Sudan, and elsewhere.
McCarthy is Distinguished Professor of History, a demographer and former department chairperson at the University of Louisville. His work contains eight chapters, enriched by 8 maps and 32 tables, based on research in British, French, Ottoman, and US archives and other sources. Estimates of human and material losses, which were massive, and of the numbers of surviving refugees consistently depend on conservative figures to reduce risk of exaggeration. McCarthy is judicious when dealing with these heretofore almost totally ignored, but essential, factors in the history of the impacts of nationalism and imperialism-in Greece, the Balkans, the...