FROM EMPIRE TO ORIENT: TRAVELLERS TO THE MIDDLE EAST, 1830-1924

"From Empire to Orient offers an alternative perspective on Britain's late imperial period by looking at the lives and writings of the men who defied the conventional attitudes of their day. Members of the British ruling class began travelling to the Near East in unprecedented numbers between the Greek revolt in 1830 and the fall of the Caliphate in 1924. Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism, this historical encounter has been viewed in the context of the West's political and cultural domination over the East. What has rarely received attention is the impact of the East upon the West in this period. Geoffrey Nash discusses those who were so profoundly affected by their travels that their cultural allegiances shifted and they came to oppose Western imperialism." "Drawing together an apparently diverse collection of characters such as the eccentric politician/diplomat David Urquhart, who fought in the Greek war of independence, or the renegade Orientalist EG Browne, who zealously supported the Persian revolution, Nash discerns a genuine discourse of dissent."--Jacket.