Marc David Baer Interviewed by Nick Higham

Historian Professor Marc David Baer explains the reality of the Ottoman dynasty – a diverse empire that straddled East and West.

Baer says the reality of the Ottoman Empire was different to the traditional view of it as an Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. It was a multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual empire that reached deep into Europe. He says the Ottomans pioneered religious tolerance but later embraced an exclusivity that led to genocide, ethnic cleansing and the demise of the empire after World War I.

Baer is professor of international history at the London School of Economics and author of Honoured by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe, which won the Albert Hourani Prize. Here he talks to Nick Higham, a former arts and media correspondent for the BBC and presenter of Meet the Author on the BBC news channel.