The government of the Ottoman Empire when at the height of its power cannot be understood from a description of its court, costumes, ceremonies, and officials, with a catalogue of their provinces and duties. A thorough comprehension of the main political ideas that constituted the life of the empire is essential. Since most of these ideas were old and tried, and were wrought in a thousand ways into the general scheme, a complete treatment would demand that they should be considered historically from the time of their adoption. Nor would it be sufficient to go back to the beginning of the house of Osman. The Turkish nucleus which gathered around him, and the Mohammedans and Christians from near and far who joined his rising fortunes were already in possession, in a fairly systematic form, of most of the ideas of the completed Ottoman government. The inquiry should be begun farther back, among Byzantine Greeks, Seljuk Turks, Mohammedans of Persia and Arabia, and Turks of Central Asia. Many of the ideas, indeed, can be traced yet farther, through Tartary to China and through Parthia and Rome to Babylon and Egypt. These origins, however, cannot be considered here except in the briefest possible fashion. All that can be done is to outline the background of Ottoman history, the general character of the Ottoman Empire and its service to the world, the racial descent of the Ottoman Turks, and the main influences which affected their institutions and culture. THE BACKGROUND OF OTTOMAN HISTORY From early times the developing Chinese civilization in the valley of the Yellow River had to contend with intermittent attacks from the barbarians of the north and west. In the latter half of the third century B.C. China’s work of domestic consolidation and centralization reached completeness, and foreign conquest began. The policy was then initiated which has never since been departed from,—the subjugation of the outlying lands and the cultural assimilation of their inhabitants.[1] Following up with armies, governors, and garrisons the nomads who fled to the west, by the beginning of the second century A.D. China held vassal all the population of the steppe country from the Great Wall to the Caspian Sea; her frontiers marched with those of Parthia. Early in the third century she entered upon four hundred years of weakness, and her western possessions fell away; but she regained strength and restored her western dominion just in time to confront the rising Saracen flood. During three brilliant centuries, the seventh, eight, and ninth of our era, she held the nomads in fairly constant subjection, and presumably taught them many of her orderly, organized ways. It was probably in part by the strength of her discipline that in the succeeding half-millennium the descendants of these nomads, Turks and Mongols, wrought their will from the Sea of Japan to the Adriatic, over most of Asia, half of Europe, and a goodly portion of Africa.