Looking East English Writing and the Ottoman Empire Before 1800 [Hardcover]

Looking East examines how English encounters with the Ottoman Empire helped shape national identities and imperial ambitions. Engagingly written in an accessible style, this book demonstrates how the so-called 'conflict of civilizations' separating the Muslim East from the Christian West is a false and dangerous myth.List of Illustrations Preface Introduction: Islam, the Ottomans and Early Modern England PART 1: BEGINNINGS The English Encounter the Ottoman World The English Abroad: Travellers, Traders, Captives and Colonists in the Ottoman Mediterranean Performing East and Captive Agency PART 2: WRITING THE OTTOMAN WORLD On Turning Turk, or Trying to: National Identity in Robert Daborne's A Christian Turn'd Turke The Sultan's Beasts: Encountering Ottoman Fauna The Making of the British Imperial Subject PART 3: SOME LITERARY IMPACTS Learn of a Turk: Restoration Culture and the Ottoman Empire A View from the West: Young American Writing about the Maghrib A View from the East: Don Juan in England Epilogue

'Looking East sweeps aside the distortions of centuries of national history to reveal how our identity has been shaped by the myriad contacts between Britons and Ottomans' - Dr Caroline Finkel, author of Osman's Dream: A History of the Ottoman Empire

'Looking East is a major contribution to the scholarship on English- and Scottish- interaction with the Ottoman world. The picture Gerald MacLean presents is far more complex and interesting than the somewhat simplistic image of East-West relations usually given by Edward Said and his followers. Instead of the old model of a straightforward binary dualism, MacLean has followed in the footsteps of Nabil Matar to present a Mediterranean world where what he calls 'mutuality, dialogue and reciprocity' predominate and where a significant number of Englishmen Turn'd Turk. This scholarly, surprising, erudite and quizzically humourous book looks set to change the way we think about early British interacl³e