From Empire to Orient

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 and Marmaduke Pickthall's advocacy of the cause of the Young Turks into their political and historical context and into the context of their writings.