East–West Relations

In the early seventeenth century, when George Strachan made his decision to go to the Middle East, journeys by Europeans in the region, although limited to a few categories of travellers, were not unusual. From ancient times there had been interchange between Europe and the East. Obstacles to free movement had appeared with the rise of Islam, and the nature of the relationship between East and West changed again with the Crusades. Following the final extinction of the Crusader kingdoms which occurred with the fall of Acre in 1291, the way in which the two cultures of Islam and Christianity viewed each other went through more transformations. The continuously changing nature of the relationship between East and West has been the subject of much debate among scholars, and different theories regarding the interactions have been developed. These include that of the ‘Global Village’ proffered by Fernand Braudel (Braudel 1972–3), and an almost diametrically opposite view of a mutual exclusion between the Islamic and the Christian worlds that has been described by James G. Harper as the ‘Iron Curtain’ model. Edward Said added to the debate by introducing the concept of Orientalism to identify the changing imbalance of power which defined the relationship:

Harper has recently refocused attention on the problem by stating that neither the ‘Iron Curtain’ model nor the ‘Global Village’ theory adequately explains these relationships. East and West were never entirely closed or entirely open to one another in all respects but altered their mutual responses as circumstances dictated (Harper 2011: 5–6).

No matter the view taken, it is generally accepted that in the Early Modern Period, when Strachan went east, free movement was possible. Visitors from the West continued to go east both as pilgrims to the Christian sites of the Holy Land and as merchants trading with the Levant and beyond. Also, numerous as these visitors were, possibly the greatest European presence in the East from the late Middle Ages onwards was that of those who had been taken as slaves.