Description:
The book examines the relationship between the Enlightenment idea of improvement and eighteenth-century travel writings about Middle Eastern overland routes to India.
Review Quotes:
"Sakhnini's impressive and original study of late eighteenth-century British travelogues illuminates both imperial history and Enlightenment ecology. Anxious to establish the fastest routes between England and India, intrepid agents of the East India Company charted itineraries between Aleppo and Basra, but, becoming fascinated by the Syrian desert and its inhabitants, projected agricultural improvements at every turn"-- Gerald MacLean, Emeritus Professor, University of Exeter.