The first group of studies in this volume tackles the controversial question of the nature of the Ottoman landholding system and the extent to which large estates, the çiftlik, emerged as a reaction to the increasing Western European demand for Ottoman agricultural produce. The following section turns to military history, a subject well documented in the archives from which Gilles Veinstein has drawn the material for his research, and not surprisingly, given that one of the main tasks of the Ottoman state was that of making war. His concern , however, is not directly with the battles, but with the logistics of Ottoman campaigns, the institutions and the powerful bureaucracy that supported these demands, and their socio-economic effects. The final pair of studies make use of census records to examine the position of non-Muslim groups - Greek, Armenian, and Jewish - in the 16th century.
