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Useful Enemies : Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 by Malcolm, Noel is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Useful Enemies : Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 about?

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 assimil

Who reads Useful Enemies : Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750?

Author

Malcolm, Noel

Publisher

IRL Press at Oxford University Press

Published

2019

Language

EN

ISBN

9780192565808

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

History, Islam, Political Science

Updated

2026-03-24