The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580-1720

The Rise of Oriental Travel follows four seventeenth-century Englishmen on their journeys around the Ottoman Empire while it was still expanding westward and the British were, for the first time in history, becoming important players in the Mediterranean. Contrary to the hostile declamations of Protestant preachers, they all found much to admire, from the multi-culturalism of the Ottoman system to the food, weather and styles of life. This book shows that hostility between East and West is neither historical or inevitable, but rather the result of selective memory.