The ailing imperialists: the Ottoman Empire in British travel literature 1821-1876

Abstract

This study attempts an analysis of memoirs and travel-literature written about the Ottoman Empire during 1821-1876. They point to the way in which the Ottoman Empire, Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, as well as the customs and policies of the times were perceived and evaluated both by the authors themselves and by their reading public. Thus, the foremost aim of this study is to analyze the world created by these traveller-authors, to point to the construction and development of certain ideas and judgements about the Ottoman Empire and the Turks, and simultaneously to draw a parallel between the ways in which the Ottoman Empire and some of the empires and colonies of the time were perceived.The analysis of the work of more than 40 authors points not only to the presence of a dominant discourse, but also to the increasing importance of imperialist notions within this discourse, especially after the Crimean War of 1853-1856, and to the seemingly contradictory dual tendency to perceive the Turks as the colonizers as well as the colonized. Furthermore, the revelation of the development of some of the illusions about the Ottoman Empire and the Turks gains importance as some of these reign supreme even today.