The 'long eighteenth century' saw a dramatic increase in European contacts with Asia, some (but not all) of which were colonial in character. The period saw the production of a voluminous travel literature that was consumed by interested European publics, and which in turn contributed, in myriad ways, to the development of European cultures. Jiirgen Osterhammel draws on this literary tradition "to challenge the conventional postcolonial wisdom that sees all attempts to understand 'the East', including those of an era 'before empire', as invariably imperialistic and contaminated by European fantasies of power" (p. x). Osterhammel's book is an important addition to the body of scholarship which, without apologising for the history of European imperialism or ignoring the ways that knowledge creation was often bound up with the colonial project, has sought to challenge the Manichaean logic of Saidian postcolonialism. Unfabling the East is a revised and expanded English-language edition of a work originally published in German in 1998. It benefits from the availability of new sources and editions published during that interval, as well as recent contributions to intellectual history such as J. G. A. Pocock's monumental series on Edward Gibbon, Barbarism and religion. Osterhammel's rare expertise in a variety of languages and intellectual traditions means he is well-equipped for his daunting task, which demands intense engagement with a multi-lingual corpus. Drawing widely on English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Russian material, Osterhammel provides a magisterial survey of a diverse and extraordinarily rich body of literature. His presentation and analysis of this material will be of particular service to English-speaking readers who, in these pages, may well make their first acquaintance with some significant authors and texts.
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