Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature by Mary Roberts (review)

Book Reviews 245 excellent; they do a good job of rejecting old chestnuts such as a cultural aversion towards the sea and a supposed turning away from innovation. Having said that, and recognizing the biases of the historiography, I would have liked some suggestions from them as to where we go from here. What would an Ottoman historiography not so dominated by naval concerns look like? What sources could be used? The last article is on maritime history in Israel. Gertwagen divides her article into 1) studies of Jewish maritime history, 2) studies of the maritime history of Palestine, and 3) the contributions of Israeli scholars to general maritime history. By organizing her article in this fashion, it is inevitable that her contribution has a rather disjointed feel to it. The reason for this is that, as she frankly lays out, the first two topics have elicited very little interest while Israeli historians have been some of the most valuable contributors to the general maritime history of the Mediterranean world. Overall, this is a very valuable contribution. In just one short one volume, the interested reader is provided with an excellent sense of the state of maritime historiography across the Mediterranean world today. Molly Greene Princeton University Roberts, Mary. Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007. Xiv, 195 pp., 32 p. of plates: ill. Cloth, $84.95: ISBN 9780822339564. Paperback, $23.95: ISBN 9780822339670. The Western artists and writers in Mary Roberts’s Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature each had, or thought they had, special access to the Ottoman harem, hence the term, “intimate outsiders.” These visitors established relationships that were professionally and personally productive, and they indulged freely in Orientalist stereotypes to satisfy an eager audience at home. But these visitors made up only part of the equation: the Ottoman women who were the subject of their paintings, photographs, and travelogues controlled access to the world of the harem and, indeed, the experiences of the visitors. Indeed, the book might have been subtitled, “Reimagining the Self,” for Roberts contends that both the European visitors and the Ottoman hosts are transformed by their contact with each other. The European artists and writers, the “intimate outsiders,” created for themselves a “unique social position” (p. 153) that illuminates the complex relationship between European Orientalists who believed that they enjoyed privileged access to domestic Ottoman life and their hosts who made such access possible but at the same time collaborated with, resisted, and even manipulated the Western painters, illustrators, and diarists who sought entry into their world. Roberts expands our understanding of the complexities of Orientalism by, as she states, “introducing voices that were previously occluded from the field” JOTSA 1:1-2 (2014) 246 and thus deepening our understanding of the Ottoman context for the “production and reception of harem representations” (p. 153). Roberts shows how modernizing trends in nineteenth-century Ottoman society found expression in the harems of the elite classes, creating a distinct tension between Westerners who sought the familiar Orientalist tropes of harem women and the real Ottoman educated elite who interacted with them. Roberts is careful to define the “noncolonial status” (p. 5) of the Ottoman Empire in relation to Europe. During her period of study, 1839 through the end of the nineteenth century, elite Ottoman women, specifically in the upper-class harems of Istanbul and Cairo, were transforming themselves politically and socially. As Roberts notes, “top-down reform” accompanied by enthusiasm for European culture on the part of the elites jockeyed with a populace that was more skeptical of nonOttoman influence. European Orientalist painters and writers, however, steadfastly ignored Ottoman modernization and continued to evoke the myth of the timeless exoticism of the East. Roberts skillfully illustrates the nuances of Orientalist writing, painting, and photography. She reminds us that the purveyors of Oriental exoticism (and eroticism) were not only men; Western women also wrote and painted the harem to suit pre-conceived ideas, both about the Ottoman world and about Europe, and to advance their careers. Women artists and writers who situated themselves inside the harem sought to...