ASLI ÇIRAKMAN, From the “Terror of the World” to the “Sick Man of Europe”: European Images of Ottoman Empire and Society from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002). Pp. 246. $15.95

Extract

In From the “Terror of the World” to the “Sick Man of Europe”: European Images of Ottoman Empire and Society from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Aslı Çırakman argues that European attitudes towards the Ottoman Empire were extremely variable in the 16th and 17th centuries, hardening into a simpler picture as Europeans became more self-confident and more self-critical: “one can observe that in the eighteenth-century images of Ottomans there is more agreement than controversy as to the nature of this peculiar form of government and people” (p. 108). The author seeks to challenge Edward Said's arguments in Orientalism, stating flatly that Said oversimplified early modern attitudes to smooth the way for a teleological argument that European attitudes started out reflexively hostile and only became more so with the rise of imperialist and colonialist agendas in the region. Specifically, she argues that earlier travelers and essayists displayed a more wide-ranging curiosity and therefore produced more diverse perspectives on the Ottoman Empire than did their counterparts in the 18th century.