The 'Tulip Age', a concept that described the beginning of the Ottoman Empire's westward inclination in the eighteenth century, was an idea proposed by Ottoman historian Ahmed Refik in 1912. In the first reassessment of the origins of this concept, Can Erimtan argues the 'Tulip Age' was an important template for various political and ideological concerns of early twentieth century Turkish governments. The concept is most reflective of the 1930s Republican leadership's attempt to disengage Turkey's population from its Islamic culture and past, stressing the virtues of progress, modernity and secularism. It was only the death of Ataturk in 1938 that precipitated a hesitant revival of Islam in Turkey's public life and a state-sponsored re-invigoration of research into Turkey's Ottoman past. In this exciting reassessment Erimtan shows us that the trope of the 'Tulip Age' corresponds more to Turkish society's desire to re-orientate itself to the Occident throughout the twentieth century rather than to early eighteenth-century Ottoman realities.

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.

Based on the account of an Ottoman ambassador's expedition to France in 1720, G"o, cek's study reveals the complex and differential impact these two societies had on each other.

Today's "clash of civilizations" between the Islamic world and the West are in many ways rooted in 19th-century resistance to Western hegemony. This compellingly argued and carefully researched transnational study details the ways in which Japan served as a model for Ottomans in attaining "non-Western" modernity in a Western-dominated global order.

From the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the eighteenth century, many Western European writers viewed the Ottoman Empire with almost obsessive interest. Typically they reacted to it with fear and distrust; and such feelings were reinforced by the deep hostility of Western Christendom towards Islam. Yet there was also much curiosity about the social and political system on which the huge power of the sultans was based. In the sixteenth century, especially, when Ottoman territorial expansion was rapid and Ottoman institutions seemed particularly robust, there was even open admiration. In this path-breaking book Noel Malcolm ranges through these vital centuries of East-West interaction, studying all the ways in which thinkers in the West interpreted the Ottoman Empire as a political phenomenon - and Islam as a political religion. Useful Enemies shows how the concept of 'oriental despotism' began as an attempt to turn the tables on a very positive analysis of Ottoman state power, and how, as it developed, it interacted with Western debates about monarchy and government. Noel Malcolm also shows how a negative portrayal of Islam as a religion devised for political purposes was assimilated by radical writers, who extended the criticism to all religions, including Christianity itself. Examining the works of many famous thinkers (including Machiavelli, Bodin, and Montesquieu) and many less well-known ones, Useful Enemies illuminates the long-term development of Western ideas about the Ottomans, and about Islam. Noel Malcolm shows how these ideas became intertwined with internal Western debates about power, religion, society, and war. Discussions of Islam and the Ottoman Empire were thus bound up with mainstream thinking in the West on a wide range of important topics. These Eastern enemies were not just there to be denounced. They were there to be made use of, in arguments which contributed significantly to the development of Western political thought.