The Epilogue discusses how the narrative and arguments of the book can help us revisit the debates in Ottoman intellectual historiography over the concept of order (nizam), underlining how labor history and class perspectives can expand the scope of questions and offer new agendas for Ottoman and global histories of the modern era. It offers a conceptual discussion of reform, and highlights the distinctive characteristics of Ottoman Reform in the long nineteenth century, by focusing on its connections with modern capitalism. It emphasizes the capitalist characteristic of the order which the reformist elites struggled to institute throughout the nineteenth century. It underlines how focusing on a specific worksite, and, in particular, studying relations of production within an Ottoman military-industrial site, could help us to reveal these capitalist patterns and class dynamics in Ottoman reform processes. It points to the necessity of the dialogue between labor/social history and intellectual history to better understand how these capitalist practices shaped or were shaped by the mentalities and ideas of Ottoman state elites during this period.

Chapter 5 examines Ottoman ideological reactions to Sudanese Mahdism, discussing how the movement differed from other Mahdi proclamations that the Ottomans only saw as uprisings and responded to them merely as political challenges. I argue that the printing press, which fell into the hands of Mahdists who looted it from the Ottoman–Egyptian government in Khartoum, saved the Mahdi rebellion from just being an uprising and allowed it to survive through the ideas of the self-proclaimed Mahdi after his death. The letters, sermons and creeds of the Mahdi were printed and disseminated quickly to distant lands. Also, the Ottoman ideological reaction was voiced through the printing press in the form of pamphlets declaring the illegitimacy of the Mahdi’s claims. Regarding the globalization of the Mahdi movement, I examine telegraphed reports that spread Mahdist ideas as far abroad as America and India. Also, I claim that the telegraph made it possible for Ottoman rulers to learn about Mahdi claims in every corner of the empire, and they were recorded in the capital city. This created an “age of the Mahdis”, which is a reference to the numerous Mahdi proclamations in this period.

The introduction focuses on the transformations of the age of steam and print. Modern technology brought unprecedented change, reshaping both human interaction with nature and the function of art and craftsmanship. The shift from agrarian life to the industrial age created a radically new world that demands careful attention. The most visible changes appeared in transportation and communication, where journeys once lasting months could now be completed in days, and news circulated within minutes. This revolution enabled rapid movement of people, ideas, and information, profoundly altering knowledge and perception. Although connections among different regions existed earlier, the nineteenth century introduced extraordinary speed and continuity, turning isolated settlements into globally interconnected spaces. Steamships, railways, telegraphs, and the printing press were the key instruments of this transformation. The circulation of newspapers and printed works fostered unprecedented awareness of distant lands and gave rise to new concepts such as the “Islamic world” or âlem-i Islam in Ottoman literature. These inventions not only expanded imagination and ideologies like Pan-Islamism but also reshaped the Ottoman outlook.

Chapter 7 covers the Ottoman political measures implemented with regard to the published works of the two movements. After discussing the censorship policies of the state, which were used in all the provinces, I explore the role of the ulema in terms of censorship policies through the biographical details of scholars based in Istanbul. The selected cases demonstrate that the published works of peripheral ulema were swiftly echoed in the centre and that the central ulema not only censored works spreading “dangerous” ideas but also directly refuted the thoughts of peripheral scholars. In this chapter, I emphasize the fact that censorship was a political means of curbing the circulation of ideas via printed books by providing details from Wahhabi and Mahdist publications. This chapter shows how the Ottomans actively tried to stop “pernicious” publications from entering Ottoman lands and limit their spread in the territories through telegraphed orders sent from the centre to all the provinces.

Chapter 1 examines the concept of the Caliphate and focuses on how the Ottoman caliphal discourse became a global idea. After discussing the Caliphate’s role in earlier periods, I argue that the idea of the Caliphate began to appear as a global phenomenon in the 1860s by taking up the case of an Ottoman scholar who travelled from Istanbul to South Africa in 1862. I then examine the transnational and intercontinental networks of the Caliphate via examples of people who travelled on steamships and railways from all over the world. In contrast to the popular belief that the Caliphate and Pan-Islamist missions were engendered through the policies of Sultan Abdülhamid II, I claim that such ambitions began before his reign and also continued after him. I discuss the globalization of the Caliphate as a process that took place in parallel with the spread of steam and print in the Ottoman Empire and demonstrate how Ottoman rulers and ulema used printing presses in the service of the caliphal idea. In this regard, I situate the Hejaz, where thousands of Muslims gathered for the Hajj, as a major hub for the communication of ideas and I point out how it was crucial for the Ottomans.

Chapter 6 focuses on Ottoman political reactions to the two opposition movements. Since the main means of spreading word about them was carried out by missionary activities, this chapter examines how Ottoman rulers reacted to Wahhabis and Mahdists in Ottoman lands. I examine in detail various cases through Ottoman archival materials, classifying them according to region as a means of showcasing the political measures implemented to stop the spread of the two movements in the centres (Istanbul and the Hejaz), in the core regions (Anatolia and Rumelia) and in the periphery (Arab regions, such as Damascus and Baghdad). This chapter shows that the severity of punishments decreased from the centre to the periphery, even though the main concern was maintaining public order in all the territories of the empire. The cases in the chapter also reveal how the telegraph and steamship helped in the central management of all the territories through the responses of the Ottoman rulers in Istanbul to incidents in the periphery.

This study has approached the Ottoman nineteenth century with three basic schemes – namely, a quadruple, triple and binary composition. It examined the impact of the quadruplet of the steamship–railway–printing press–telegraph on the binary of centre–periphery relations through the trinity of Caliphate–Wahhabism–Mahdism. In that way, it has addressed the political and intellectual histories of the era in light of global developments.

Chapter 2 serves as an introduction to Wahhabism and Mahdism, which were the ideologies of two respective kinds of revival movements, the former doctrine-oriented and the latter person-oriented. Both, however, stood in opposition to the caliphal discourse. After providing a brief history of the Wahhabi and Sudanese Mahdi movements and a comparison of them, I evaluate their perceptions of “infidel Turks”, whom they deemed to be their main enemy, as a means of shedding light on their religious mission to fight the Ottoman state. By doing so, I also seek to show why the Ottomans saw those ideas as threats. Wahhabism and Mahdism entailed rebellion, and as a means of demonstrating the dangers they posed for the Ottomans, I discuss how the two revival movements tapped into global networks via the tools of steam and print.