Oriental Panorama

By addressing the ways in which entertainment was employed and enjoyed in Ottoman society, Entertainment Among the Ottomans introduces the reader to a new way of understanding the Ottoman world.

From Empire to Orient offers an alternative perspective on Britain's late imperial period by looking at the lives and the writings of the men who chose to defy the conventional social and political attitudes of the British ruling classes towards the Near East. Between the Greek revolt in 1830 and the fall of the Caliphate in 1924 a different kind of voice was heard that was both anti-Imperialist and pro-Islamic. Geoffrey Nash places David Urquhart 's passionate belief in the ideal of municipal government in Turkey, W.S. Blunt's enthusiasm for the Egyptian reformers of the Azhar, E.G. Browne's zeal for the Persian revolution and Marmaduke Pickthall's pained advocacy of the cause of the Young Turks into their political and historical context and into the context of their writings. The author argues that the actions of these men represented a distinctive identification with the Islamic world and of the involvement of the West in its politics. By condemning Britain's manoeuvres and choice of allies in the Near East, each of these writers embellished a narrative of betrayal and a breach with the British educated classes' view of the Islamic East. Through the lives and writings of these men who identified so passionately with the Islamic world, Nash offers a fascinating perspective on Britain's late imperial period.

Perhaps unexpectedly, English travel writing during the long eighteenth century reveals a discourse of global civility. By bringing together representations of the then already familiar Ottoman Empire and the largely unknown South Pacific, Sascha Klement adopts a uniquely global perspective and demonstrates how cross-cultural encounters were framed by Enlightenment philosophy, global interconnections, and even-handed exchanges across cultural divides. In so doing, this book shows that both travel and travel-writing from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries were much more complex and multi-layered than reductive Eurocentric histories often suggest.

According to conventional historical wisdom, Irish nationalism in Canada was a marginal phenomenon - overshadowed by the more powerful movement in the United States and eclipsed in Canada by the Orange Order. The nine contributors in this book argue otherwise - and in doing so make a major and original contribution to our understanding of the Irish experience in Canada and the place of Irish-Canadian nationalism within an international context. Focusing on the period 1820 to 1920, they examine political, religious, and cultural expressions of Irish-Canadian nationalism as it responded to Irish events and Canadian politics. They also look at tensions within the movement between those who argued that Ireland should share the same freedom that Canada enjoyed within the British Empire and revolutionary republicans who wanted to liberate both Ireland and Canada from the yoke of British imperialism. Irish Nationalism in Canada sheds light on questions such as transference of old world political traditions into North America, the dynamics of ethno-religious conflict, and state responses to a revolutionary minority within an ethno-religious group. Contributors include Donald Harman Akenson (Queen's University, Kingston), Sean Farrell (Northern Illinois University), Mark G. McGowan (St Michael's College, University of Toronto), Frederick J. McEvoy (Independent Scholar), Michael Peterman (Trent University), Garth Stevenson (Brock University), Peter M. Toner (University of New Brunswick), Rosalyn Trigger (University of Aberdeen), and David A. Wilson (University of Toronto).

Known for his ultraconservatism and eccentricity, Gu Hongming (1857-1928) remains one of the most controversial figures in modern Chinese intellectual history. A former member of the colonial elite from Penang who was educated in Europe, Gu, in his late twenties, became a Qing loyalist and Confucian spokesman who also defended concubinage, footbinding, and the queue. Seen as a reactionary by his Chinese contemporaries, Gu nevertheless gained fame as an Eastern prophet following the carnage of World War I, often paired with Rabindranath Tagore and Leo Tolstoy by Western and Japanese intellectuals. Rather than resort to the typical conception of Gu as an inscrutable eccentric, Chunmei Du argues that Gu was a trickster-sage figure who fought modern Western civilization in a time dominated by industrial power, utilitarian values, and imperialist expansion. A shape-shifter, Gu was by turns a lampooning jester, defying modern political and economic systems and, at other times, an avenging cultural hero who denounced colonial ideologies with formidable intellect, symbolic performances, and calculated pranks. A cultural amphibian, Gu transformed from an "imitation Western man" to "a Chinaman again," and reinterpreted, performed, and embodied "authentic Chineseness" in a time when China itself was adopting the new identity of a modern nation-state. Gu Hongming's Eccentric Chinese Odyssey is the first comprehensive study in English of Gu Hongming, both the private individual and the public cultural figure. It examines the controversial scholar's intellectual and psychological journeys across geographical, national, and cultural boundaries in new global contexts. In addition to complicating existing studies of Chinese conservatism and global discussions on civilization around the World War I era, the book sheds new light on the contested notion of authenticity within the Chinese diaspora and the psychological impact of colonialism.