In this study, Bernadette Andrea focuses on the contributions of women and their writings in the early modern cultural encounters between England and the Islamic world. She examines previously neglected material, such as the diplomatic correspondence between Queen Elizabeth I and the Ottoman Queen Mother Safiye at the end of the sixteenth century, and resituates canonical accounts, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's travelogue of the Ottoman empire at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Her study tells how women negotiated conflicting discourses of gender, orientalism, and imperialism at a time when the Ottoman empire was hugely powerful and England was still a marginal nation with limited global influence.
This analysis of historical documents, visual records, and literary works focuses on five women: Elen More and Lucy Negro, both from Islamic West Africa: Ipolita the Tartarian, a girl acquired from Islamic Central Asia: Teresa Sampsonia, a Circassian from the Safavid Empire: and Mariam Khanim, an Armenian from the Mughal Empire. By analysing these women’s lives and their impact on the literary and cultural life of proto-colonial England, the author reveals that they are simultaneously significant constituents of the emerging Anglo-centric discourse of empire and cultural agents in their own right.