Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East: Performing Cultures ed. by Sabine Schülting, Sabine Lucia Müller, and Ralf Hertel

Abstract

Reviewed by: Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East: Performing Cultures ed. by Sabine Schülting, Sabine Lucia Müller, and Ralf Hertel Dennis Austin Britton (bio) Keywords Christian-Muslim encounter, performance theory, cross-cultural contact, travel, diplomacy, cultural difference, Ottoman empire, early modern literature Sabine Schülting, Sabine Lucia Müller, and Ralf Hertel, eds. Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East: Performing Cultures. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2012. xv + 226 pages. $114.95. Like other studies of the past decade, the essays in Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East: Performing Cultures evince the inadequacy of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism to explain early modern Christian Europe’s relationship with and representations of the Islamic East. The collection’s central [End Page 132] claim, however, is unique: early modern encounters between the “West” and the “East”—problematic as those terms are—may better be understood by examining performativity in cross-cultural encounters. The editors argue that their “focus on performing cultures draws particular attention to the contingent nature of . . . cultural encounters in which roles are improvised and the rules regulating the conduct of the participants are subject to negotiation” (2). The essays primarily examine early modern English texts—the exceptions are an essay on Italian painting, one on Italian music, and one on contemporary German drama. Considering plays, travel literature, painting and music, the collection’s essays make a strong case for rethinking encounter itself; they describe how often European emissaries performed identities that reified power relations, how material objects like clothing accrue meaning through performance, and how cross-cultural encounter shapes the formal and aesthetic choices pertaining to artistic performance. The collection is divided into three parts. The essays in Part 1, “Players and Playgrounds,” focus on the role of contingency in cross-cultural encounters, detailing just how much specific outcomes depended on the ability of European “actors” to perform expected roles. These essays also attend to performance by highlighting the significance of clothing, tone of voice, and bodily gestures—especially important because of the way these signifiers express linguistic and cultural difference. The first chapter, Sabine Lucia Müller’s “William Harborne’s Embassies: Scripting, Performance and Editing Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy,” considers the varying layers of performance imbedded in Richard Hakluyt’s editing of accounts of Harborne’s travels to Turkey: Harborne performs for English stakeholders his performance before the sultan, and Hakluyt strategically edits the narratives to perform an English fantasy of its superior position in European-Ottoman trade relations. Although the essay’s central claim—that “reports of diplomatic encounters were edited and fashioned both for current audience and posterity” (13)—is somewhat obvious, the essay persuasively details how the contingent nature of cultural encounters is erased in Navigations in order to create a teleological narrative of empire. In “Performing at the Ottoman Porte in 1599: The Case of Henry Lello,” Gerald Maclean argues that “successful Anglo-Ottoman diplomacy was not simply a matter of Englishmen understanding and following Ottoman protocols, but more importantly of their ability to interpret and perform them” (27). The distinctions Maclean makes between understanding versus interpretation and between following protocols versus performing them are [End Page 133] subtle ones; extending what he elsewhere calls “playing east,” his essay shows that emissaries invented and performed forms of national identity that they considered necessary and suited for the Islamic context, and that an emissary’s success depended upon his ability to outperform his rivals. Maclean’s essay also provides evidence that negates the scholarly consensus that the Ottoman Empire did not engage in “modern” diplomacy because it was bound to Jihad. Richmond Barbour’s very informative essay, “Command Performances: Early English Trader’s in Arabia Felix,” takes up the collection’s critique of Saidian Orientalism by examining how English traders performed their subject position vis-à-vis the basha. Examining the East India Company’s early documents, Barbour shows that “Public spectacles constituted an international language of power that here instructed the English to read on their bodies the lessons of power dominion.... Established by textual and theatrical protocols, the identities and purposes of the English merchants were not clear to their hosts until they were proven in performances” (47). The...