TY - BOOK AU - Malcolm,Noel TI - Useful enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western political thought, 1450-1750 SN - 9780198830139 AV - DR471 .M35 2019 U1 - 320.557 23 PY - 2019/// CY - Oxford, New York, NY PB - Oxford University Press KW - Public opinion, European KW - fast KW - Islambild KW - gnd KW - Rezeption KW - Turkey KW - History KW - Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918 KW - Foreign public opinion, European KW - Europa KW - Osmanisches Reich KW - Westliche Welt N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 423-463) and index; The fall of Constantinople, the Turks, and the humanists -- Views of Islam: standard assumptions -- Habsburgs and Ottomans: 'Europe' and the conflict of empires -- Protestantism, Calvinoturcism, and Turcopapalism -- Alliances with the infidel -- The new paradigm -- Machiavelli and reason of state -- Campanella -- Despotism I: the origins -- Analyses of Ottoman strength and weakness -- Justifications of warfare, and plans for war and peace -- Islam as a political religion -- Critical and radical uses of Islam I: Vanini to Toland -- Critical and radical uses of Islam II: Bayle to Voltaire -- Despotism II: seventeenth-century theories -- Despotism III: Montesquieu N2 - 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 assimilated by radical writers, who extended the criticism to all religions, including Christianity itself. Examining the works of many famous thinkers (including Machiavelli, Bodin, and Montesquieu) and many less well-known ones, Useful Enemies illuminates the long-term development of Western ideas about the Ottomans, and about Islam. Noel Malcolm shows how these ideas became intertwined with internal Western debates about power, religion, society, and war. Discussions of Islam and the Ottoman Empire were thus bound up with mainstream thinking in the West on a wide range of important topics. These Eastern enemies were not just there to be denounced. They were there to be made use of, in arguments which contributed significantly to the development of Western political thought. -- ER -