The conquest of Constantinople by the army of Mehmed ii (1453), which opened a new scenario in European political and cultural history, and the publication of Montesquieu's Esprit des lois (1748), which marked an essential moment in the history of modern political thought, are the two events that form the framework for three centuries of considerations, investigations and debates concerning Islam and the Ottoman Empire. This is the topic of Noel Malcolm's impressive inquiry, which is remarkable for its insight, order and clarity of exposition. The core of Malcolm's investigation is mainly the ‘usefulness’ of the Islam and Ottoman topic. It involves a great many voices – not only the main actors of intellectual life – and it highlights an important aspect of the history of modern political thought. Condemnations and denigrations of the Islamic enemy were strongly rooted in the Christian religious tradition. However, and mainly during the religious and intellectual turmoil of the age of Reformation, the uses of Islam and the Ottoman example implied a more complex intellectual dynamic. There was no lack of sympathetic expressions regarding Islam in this context, although, as Malcolm rightly remarks, they were not so much an expression of ‘Turcophilia’, as more the result of a logic of ‘shame-praising’, that is a rhetorical strategy aimed at better highlighting the scandal of doctrines and the practices of enemies within Christendom. The idea of greater toleration in the Ottoman Empire as compared with the Catholic world, for instance, was the reason for the widescale spread of the slogan ‘Liever Turks dan paaps’ (‘rather Turkish than popish’) in the Dutch Calvinist context. Parallels and scandalous comparisons between Islam and its Christian adversaries are typical expressions of that era's ideological and religious strife and were the main reason for the development of notions like ‘Calvinoturcism’ on the Catholic side, or ‘Turcopapalism’ on the Protestant front.

From another standpoint, starting from the shock of the fall of Constantinople, many scholars wondered about the real causes of Ottoman power and investigated the topic, pointing out differences with respect to the European context which, in some cases, justified positive judgements. In fact, many examples that produced ‘a picture of Ottoman government and society as a well-ordered and stable system, in which significant aspects of civil life were better arranged than their equivalents in Western Christendom’ (p. 137) can be given. The more usual references were to the effective order and discipline of the Ottoman army, as main reasons for its strength were supplemented by new important topics, such as a notion of authority deriving not from rank but from merit, or a representation of judicial processes that were quicker and more effective when compared to the complicated European ones, or – albeit to a lesser extent – religious toleration which allowed various religions to coexist within the Ottoman world.

Malcolm identifies all these judgements and observations as a ‘new paradigm’ in the European attitudes towards the Ottoman world. It mainly comes from a variety of direct experiences – from Guillaume Postel to Pierre Belon, and many others – that were also the result of the need to establish a fabric of diplomatic relations with the Sublime Porte, as Malcolm remarks, notwithstanding the specific problems inherent to the relationship with an infidel power and mainly, as at the time of Louis xiv, to the possibility of establishing a strategic alliance. The relevance of the ‘new paradigm’ is emphasised at various levels. On an eminently political side, for instance, Jean Bodin offered a particularly important theoretical contribution in his analysis of despotism as ‘monarchie seigneuriale’, radically different from the king's authority in a ‘monarchie royale’ but also from ‘tyrannie’. On a philosophical and religious side the role of Islam and Muhammad in the writings of Tommaso Campanella is particularly interesting, because he proposed an original ‘combination … of the new paradigm, Machiavellianism, Renaissance naturalism, Catholic reason of state theory, and prophetic millenarianism’ (p. 200).

In fact, the development of philosophical and religious thought in the seventeenth century highlights various uses of the Ottoman example. And from this point of view, mainly in the radical intellectual context, the concept of imposture ‘played a central role’ (p. 307), showing the possibility of addressing criticism levied against Islam to Christianity as well, as the theory of the ‘three impostors’ clearly showed. In parallel, a political analysis of Islamic states was carried out, in which the application of the ‘new paradigm’ was often coupled with the acceptance of a Machiavellian approach, emphasising positive opinions of Islam and the Ottoman Empire. This, for instance, is the case of the republican Francis Osborne who pointed out that the conduct of the Christian leaders was often crueller and more violent than the Mahometan one, or Henry Stubbe, who emphasised Muhammad's exceptional character and political genius. These ideas spread widely, beyond the English free-thinkers, and we can grasp their lasting effectiveness when considering, for instance, the image of Muhammad in the writings of Boulainvilliers and the general intellectual scenario in which Voltaire's representation of Islam is placed.

In this framework the theory of despotism, whose history is summarised in three acts, according to the chronological order of the book, constitutes the backbone of the investigation and a particularly important focus. Beyond the importance of Jean Bodin, the development of seventeenth-century thought highlights the complexity of the theoretical distinction between ‘despotism’ and ‘absolutism’, and the variety of approaches to this critical issue related to different philosophical and political orientations. As a culmination of a long path of political reflections, direct observations, ideological uses inside the European context, the theory of despotism exposed by Montesquieu is emphasised as a comprehensive attempt to define despotism as a consistent system, although not without argumentative difficulties. As Malcolm remarks, perhaps too severely but not without foundation, in Montesquieu's representation much is ‘arbitrary or selective’ (p. 386) and many are the ‘omissions’ and ‘exaggerations’ (p. 393). Malcolm offers an insightful summary of this topic, on which there is a large and even recent scholarly literature. He highlights the originality of Montesquieu's approach ‘not only in his extracting and isolating the ‘‘pure’’ nature of despotism, but also in his attempts to show that the factors which limited and opposed despotism were at the same time the very ones that strengthened it and kept it alive’ (p. 393).

The leitmotif of this fascinating exploration of modern European political culture is the emphasis on applying the concept of usefulness to Islam and the Ottoman Empire. And Malcolm's comment that the role that they played in Western thinkers was ‘not as mere “others” to be put in their subordinate place, nor simply as threats to be conceptually isolated and neutralized, but as active ingredients to be worked into their theories’ (p. 417) is particularly important. This a quite correct and shareable conclusion, which highlights the great distance between Malcolm's approach, strongly grounded on philological and historical inquiry, and Edward Said's, whose analytical limits are briefly but effectively underlined in the final pages of this book, which offer a sound and useful contribution to historical inquiry and reflection.