While searching for an English language book on the 17th century Cossack wars for By Fire and Sword, I came across Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe: Russia's Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth Century by Brian Davies. I had painted up an SYW Russian army to fight my Prussians, but always wanted to get an Ottoman army to fight the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1736-1739 and 1768-1774. With very little English language source material other than a few pages from Duffy's Russia's Military Way to the West, I had little to go on and picked this up. Having just completed it, I have to say it is probably one of the best history books I have ever read. I have to admit that I have been enthralled by 18th Century Russia ever since watching the 1980's mini-series "Peter the Great" so my interest in the subject may be biased.
First off, do not go off of the subtitle as this is not an examination of the 18th Century Russo-Turkish Wars. It is rather an academic assessment of the militaries of Eastern Europe to include the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossack Hetmanate (Ukraine), The Crimean Khanate and how Russia became the dominant power in the region at the end of the century through what Davies cites other scholars calling a "Military Revolution".
This is an academic political-economic-military history book, so do not expect the level of detail of battle accounts that you would find in a work by Christopher Duffy, David Chandler, or even an Osprey title. The author does provide strengths of the various armies down to troop types but no orders of battle, probably because accurate after-action reports of the time by Russian and foreign officers in Russian service are not available or in the case of the Ottoman commanders do not exist. The biggest fault of the book is a lack of maps. There is only one area map with army movements for the entire period, but no battlefield maps. The author gives good descriptions of battle accounts, but I found them hard to follow without a map and troop dispositions. This may go back to the commanders of the time in this theater did not produce such maps as part of their accounts or rather they do not exist in the archives available to the author. Possibly using a Russian academic counterpart to assist in drawing maps for the book would have been beneficial, but with today's political environment, this type of academic cooperation is likely becoming more difficult.
Surprisingly most of the first part of the book is focused on Peter the Great's military and social-economic reforms and the Great Northern War. Only the last two chapters cover the main two Russo-Turkish wars of the period with an emphasis on the 1736-39 war and only a slight mention of the 1768-74 war (the author has written a separate book on the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774). Also, the Seven Years War is hardly mentioned which in my opinion is a better example of the "Military Revolution" which established Russia as a European power.
The book does fill in the gap between the end of the Polish–Cossack–Tatar-Russian Wars from 1654-1676 to the rise of Suvorov in the French Revolutionary Wars. This is a great "fluff" book for any wargamer interested in the 17th Century Cossack Wars, Great Northern War, and the 18th Century Ottoman Wars. You will not find the level of tactical detail to help you design a wargame scenario, but you will come away with a better understand of why these wars were fought and how these armies were raised.
Now I need to dust off my Russians and start painting up that Ottoman army.