In this short book, John Fox and Renata Fox seek to provide a cultural account of the world in which British gentlemen embarked on long and often perilously challenging voyages across early modern Europe and into the Levant. Based on the travelogues and writings of a number of British gentlemen, Fox and Fox attempt to recreate this world by looking at who embarked on these demanding journeys and why it was so important for them to write about their travels, how they managed (or did not) to get to their destinations, and what such a journey looked like for these men as they traveled through foreign and occasionally unfriendly lands. It is an ambitious goal for a book of under one hundred pages, and consequently the book can offer only a glimpse into this world, but it should be remembered that this is a work intended for the general reader rather than an academic audience.
Fox and Fox, who are not historians by profession, structure the book in broadly three parts, starting by covering some of the key themes that underlie the book in the first few chapters, before exploring typical journeys and routes taken, and then moving onto a more detailed account of one particular voyage. While the structure is sensible, the brevity of each section, especially the initial chapters, results in generic and occasionally fragmented writing that paint rather two-dimensional representations of complex and fascinating subjects.
The initial chapters that cover these central themes—“The British Gentleman,” “The Levant,” and “The Travelogue”—total sixteen pages, which may suffice for a reader new to the subject, but may be considered far too short for those with familiarity with such topics. “The British Gentleman,” for instance, at two-and-a-half pages, touches on the origin of the social group in the thirteenth century and offers a brief discussion of their position in early modern British society, but over half of the content consists of a biography and extract of Sir Philip Sidney's writing and a reproduction of the family crest.
The ambition to fit vast themes into such small chapters sometimes results in scattered points, a cramped writing style, and statements of generalization rather than specificity. “Knowledge” reads as a series of loosely connected points on the appreciation of knowledge since the Greeks rather than supporting the Fox and Fox's (convincing) argument that travel abroad provided an opportunity for—and was therefore often driven by—education. Similarly, simplified claims such as “since the reign of Henry VII . . . the Levant has always been about trade” (14) do not do justice to the complicated position that this large portion of the eastern Mediterranean held in early modern thought as a place where religions, cultures, and empires met. Occasionally these simplifications veer into the entirely misleading, such as claiming that “the English never feared or hated the Turks” (15); the popular early seventeenth-century English historian and travel writer Richard Knolles reflected a common sentiment when he wrote that the Turks were “sworn enemies of the Christian” (The Generall Historie of the Turkes [1603], 847).
The book improves once Fox and Fox move on to covering the types of routes and destinations on a typical journey from England into the Levant. They add considerable color to these journeys with material such as extracts from travelogues (which feel better placed in these chapters than in the earlier ones), paintings, maps, photos of objects, and newspaper articles that all help the reader form an image of the various towns, routes, and other elements of a journey. Again, the brevity of the project cuts short what could have been fascinating explorations into early modern places like Venice and Constantinople and what they meant to the contemporary British gentleman. Nevertheless, Fox and Fox show a more nuanced approach in this section, helping the reader appreciate the challenging nature of such travels and the conflicting attitudes of Englishmen toward the Levant. Here travel accounts are used to illuminate what it was like for an English Protestant traveling across religious boundaries (both Christian and Muslim) into the Levant. Fox and Fox do well to point out the complex position Constantinople occupied in the mind of the English traveler: it was exotic, rich, and in many ways more favorable to Protestants than were many Catholic parts of Europe, but it was also considered an occupied city and the prime example of the Muslim threat to Europe.
The most interesting part is the final section, accounting for one third of the book. “A Voyage” builds on the previous chapters by bringing a journey to life in much more detail by following two British men traveling across the Adriatic to Constantinople. Here Fox and Fox are most successful in helping the reader appreciate the motivation, nature, and travails of voyages into the early modern Levant by supplying historical context for the journey, and adding additional material like images of the flora than inspired many travelers to the eastern Mediterranean. This vignette into this fascinating age of travels leaves one wishing that Fox and Fox had offered the same level of much-needed detail to the earlier chapters.
Overall, Fox and Fox manage to successfully draw upon a range of original sources to provide the reader with a generally engaging and informative account, particularly in the last section, and the biographies and anecdotes weaved throughout the book make for interesting reading. While the shortcomings in length, depth, and writing style detract from what could have been a more compelling dive into a very interesting time in European and British history, this little book will be a welcome addition to readers wishing to learn about this topic.
